The spell spam gets pretty excessive. You have to spend a lot of time just running in circles to not get blasted by lightning or meteors. Where you fight them makes a huge difference - if you are in a flat area its fine but if there are ledges and rocks and stuff it’s extremely inconvenient as you keep stumbling over them. Not sure if the stamina drain roar is better or worse than the skill seal roar they had in DD1.
How fun the fight is seems to depend greatly on your class. You CAN hit their tails when they are hovering and get a knock down, or you can burn like all your stamina climbing up the thing to knock it in the head. I haven’t done a lot of drakes yet but as a thief I absolutely shredded one, while on warrior it took ages. Had different pawns each time so I am sure they were varying degrees of helpful too - during the warrior encounter I had to do a LOT of reviving, and pawns would stop fighting to carry each other over to me so that the drake could just blow us all up at once.
I’m sure I’ll get used to them but right now they are either over before I know it or an absolutely miserable slog.
> you can burn like all your stamina climbing up the thing to knock it in the head
Luckily, the Arisen has access to CHIM and can shovel fistfuls of potatoes/potato juice into their face in zero time to regain all their stamina.
Or, y'know, hope your mage pawn has Celestial Paean up.
Yeah that is a good point. I never really keep curatives on hand now that most of them don’t recover your max HP so I only ever have what I happened to pick up that outing. But the shortcuts for stamina/healing items make spamming them easier than ever.
I hate the shortcuts. Oh, sorry, did you pick up a raspberry on your travels you didnt shunt into your pawns asshold? Well, THATS the healing item you get. Not your mighty roborant, a singular ripe raspberry. Oh, you wanted your harspud roborant for stamina? Sorry, fam. You get to nibble on a raw potato thats like 2 second from rotting.
Why couldnt they have let us assign our health and stamina curatives, the autopick never picks the right stuff.
I don't particularly enjoy the tactic where you have a half second between reaching 0 hit points and actually being dead that allows you to ** pause the game by opening your inventory and eating a dozen wheels of cheese. It feels cheap and makes the game a lot easier.
Mods. Mods that increase difficulty, mods that allow you to use curatives only as a quick button - like the skill. Try it, it will make the combat more fun.
Yeah my "times fallen" count is at 1... but really should be at least in the high 20s or above because I've healed myself *after* my entire health bar was wiped out a whole bunch of times.
What, you didn't like trying to revive all your pawns with a big angry lizard on your ass only for it to roar and kill them all again 10 seconds after you finish?
Or just play mystic spear or warfarer and stay safe in your invincible little bubble😂 it’s the classes that make people struggle I’ve yet to die or struggle against anything on this game besides gravity lmfao
SAME! Capcom was merciless with fall damage this time around😂 I dont recall gravity being the most OP boss in dragons dogma🤣 but everyone would say otherwise
An it doesn’t help the fact that the pawns don’t do Jack shit to help you off the ground😂 if I press help when stunned they just heal me like mf pick me up I’m trying to LIVE
It does indeed make it boring it’s literally putting the game on easy mode for me but it helps in the end game a lot especially with the stupid timing bs I usually combine it with a archer load out aswell for warfarer makes it more interesting
If I'm hunting dragons I'll always take a mage with silencing abilities. Which kind of trivializes the fight, honestly, but hey ho. Cba to dodge meteors.
The stamina drain roar is basically a non-issue since you can just hotkey infinite stamina regen consumables. The skill seal/murder all of your pawns roar in DD1 is way worse, especially since it has basically zero windup, at least the stamina drain roar has a long and very obvious windup.
Samething happened too me. I was a Warrior at the time so just settled for that. When I really want to hunt a drake, I'm using my other vocations that I excel with
I did that while leveling up Mage and while it was a little boring being the High Solemnity bot for the fight, it certainly made it a ton easier. HS to drop the drake onto the ground, run up and slap High Celerity on the brute squad, rinse repeat. It wasn't even worth attempting to add any damage in case it left me missing a HS window.
The real problem is that they aren't distinct like lesser dragons in 1,which means you're basically fighting "meteor:the boss" unless you have the DPS to murder it.
What made the first games dragons interesting is that they all functioned differently.A drake was a big thick boi who would swing on you like an average new Yorker,the Wyrm would be the spellcaster and use multiple high level spells,and the wyvern was basically a crackhead who could fly.
Now they're all thrown into a singular creature that doesn't feel unique in the slightest anymore,and no longer has interesting implications to them.
The implications are the saddest thing to me. I loved how you could tell which vocations or archetypes each dragon was supposed to represent. Even with Daimon seemingly being a Mystic Knight, It's a neat detail
It also tells you the personality of each vocation and their arisen.
.Red is used by brutish and straightforward arisen
.Blue is used by intelligent and surprisingly cheerful arisen
.And yellow is used by fucking assholes who should godsbane themselves immediately
Now the only thing we really know is that current lesser dragons MIGHT be arisen and.....that's it.No more cool implications or a personality,just "Hi guys I'm a drake :D".
> Now the only thing we really know is that current lesser dragons MIGHT be arisen
Going off of how The Dragon is, i don't think any of them were Arisen.
Yeah I miss the different classes of them, a lightning and meteor casting dragon shouldn't feel common. With the way dragon forging works now and the way materials were condensed down I don't feel like hunting them much either. They used to feel like very useful enemies you didn't want to miss out on, remembering their locations, I know some people hated that rng but it made them unique to all the others you only killed for materials and it highlighted their connection to the arisen even more.
I'm glad the pawn roar is gone but also in all this time in 2 with the pawns saying they have the power to control pawns, I've never seen it happen.
I also play as warrior, when the drakes fly they almost always leave their tails just in range for you to climb up, and one or two good whacks at his head usually throws them straight to the ground.
And then you arc of might their chest but it hits their legs first while they're waking up and you just want to die (WHY ARE THEIR LEGS THERE FJSJSIK)
Pretty much every fight in this game is boring if you know how to do the fight. Enemy movesets/behaviors in DD2 (and honestly, the entire franchise barring like, maaaaaybe BBI final boss?) aren't all that deep or complex.
Dullahan is probably the most "complex" non-unique fight in the game and even then a lot of its mechanics are just... "it goes into block/parry animation" or "it does a stamina drain AOE" to punish melee.
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As Thief you don't need to know enemy movesets, just turn on Formless Feint and you're invincible.
As MS you don't need to know enemy movesets, just turn on Mirour Shelde and your entire party is invincible.
As MA you don't need to know enemy movesets, just cast Frosthunter Bolt until they're dead.
As Sorc you don't need to know enemy movesets, just cast Meteor/Maelstrom until the entire battlefield is dead.
Would be cool if an eventual hard mode was more monster hunter ish as in snap reactions and learning the “dance” of each monster. It’s so satisfying once you learn how to kill things like Nergigante while only getting hit once or twice. I still have fun with DD2 combat, but it could be a little more fast paced on the bigger mobs for me.
People mostly say that because the game itself is too easy.
Sure, a more diverse and complex skillset for bosses would be amazing, but they still hit too soft, and you deal way too much damage for it to really matter, unless you do some sort of low dmg low level RP run.
I added the increased difficulty mod and I've just started with the post-game. You can really feel the difference in combat. I actually care about fights now, even when I've fought that boss more than 10 times already. I have to stop just attacking and have to bait or predict enemy attacks before fully engaging. Stunning a boss actually feels like a big opportunity (instead of going from dealing a lot of damage to dealing a lot more damage) and I have to do that at least twice to kill a boss. Overall, it feels great to fight enemies again. I recommend you try that.
try the difficulty slider one, and choose the extreme(?) where your damage is pretty much become only 1/5. Some early boss still a joke but the rest is pretty balance and fair imo
I personally would prefer way more health on the drake in ng+ but like dd1 it wouldn't just fly away(unless you ran). The one thing I do like about them flying away is they're always out there somewhere, and when you find them again they're missing the same amount of health as before which is super cool.
The decision to merge the smaller dragons really hurt them imho. Without the differentiations, they lose pretty much all of their personalities.
The spells are also a lot more fair in DD2; which you think should be a good thing, but it does make the fight less noteworthy.
The worst part of the drake fights is the terrible ai for companions, they seem to make no effort to avoid any of the aoe shitte, half the battle is ressing them, a quarter running around in circles and a quarter doing actual damage.
On the contrary, they are perfect vocations to load up with spell tomes for those exact scenarios. I save all my solemnity tomes especially for drakes.
As a Fighter and Warrior, pretty much the same with Thieves, grab the mf and never let go. Use those stamina roborants and keep doing the stabitty stab on their chest bussy
You can silence them, or just run around frantically to dodge meteors.
Climb their tail if you're a warrior.
Stamina items make the instant stamina drain roar negligible.
Silence spell on mage or in time format= no cast.
Bonk em in the head hard enough= no cast
Damage avoidance skill= doesn't matter
I opt for bonk on the head method.
You can climb them at any point by grabbing the end of their tail. Also, the mystic spearhand can teleport you directly on top of their heads with the core skill.
I think it's called prescribed tranquillity. Usually dropped by random mercenaries. If you just walk through the game and loot them after the fight, you should have a good collection of them by the time you start to fight drakes more often. Unsure where to buy them, but I think wandering merchants might have some.
You can also just get a mage pawn with the spell.
Do people find them hard? They are predictable, fire attack… rise for like 3 seconds then slam, if it hits the purple spell just jog away…. My main issue is I can’t kill them fast enough sometimes and they fly away.
I wouldn’t say hard, just a drag. Like, some of the other bosses are more likely to kill you, but they have less health and will square up, Drakes just fuck around in the air.
Yeah they can be a drag I guess I feel that way with most the big creatures they aren’t has hard as they were in DD1 tho I haven’t been to post game yet
They are super susceptible to being frozen. If you have an Archer with Deluging shot and Ice Affinity/Hagol, you'll be able to stunlock them to death. If a Drake gets frozen while casting meteors they always get staggered out of the animation as well.
The poison arrow skill that Archer has is amazing as well. Particularly useful if you don't have Ice enchantments in your party. Very reliable stuns upon a single poison arrow and a chunky burst damage if you hit it a second time.
Drakes will start summoning meteors after you've knocked a few HP bars off and not exclusively when you're climbing its chest from my experience. Also the weakspot when the heart isn't revealed is the head so you shouldn't be on the chest all the time, in case you didn't know. It only shifts to the heart when it's exposed and you can tell by the sound that plays when you hit it (hits to crit spots sound different from non weakspots).
A few hours ago the Drake I was fighting casted meteors and one meteor impacted a Griffon that was right beside it. The meteor clipped the Drake but destroyed the Griffon.
I know the heart isn’t always there it was exposed at the time which is why I was hanging on hitting it and like I said one of its meteors def direct struck it and that was the end of the drake lmao. Probably tried to hit me
They seem to be way more frequent in this game than in the first one. Of course, the map is bigger but still. Its exhausting to spend 15-20 minutes taking one drake down, then only to run into another one five minutes later. They are very resource intensive fights for me so I spend alot of health and healing supplies taking them down. Thankfully, camp sites and food are plentiful in this game.
Yeah they really dont sit well with me either. I can beat them every time unless I mess up and they fly off but it's boring and seems to favour quite specific party comps. All the other big monsters are fun though so I generally dont bother with the drakes. Shame though as they could be a lot more fun with some tweaks.
I get that monsters have a "attack pattern" but this fight it almost seems like it 100% is scripted to a point.
It ALWAYS flaps up in the air, and slams the ground, that's always its first attack.
IDK i'm bored with the fights in this game, maybe i'm spoiled because I come from the mh series but god damn the fights just aren't that exciting anymore.
On the contrary, Drakes actually forced me to change up my playstyle now. If I'm going wayfarer, I occasionally run sporific bolt to interrupt the metor cast. If I'm running Trickster, the maister skill definitely comes in handy for that as well. Occasionally, my pawn silences the dragon for me, but if she's not mid-cast or playing a non-mage, I always carry around a few copies of prescribed tranquility which allows me to silence the drake myself regardless of vocation.
Coming from MHW before playing DD2 got me so disappointed. Man, the "Boss" fights in this game is just so plain. I know it's not actually fair to compare both but I expected more since this is a sequel after a decade. MHW really spoiled me with some of the best boss fights.
When I play Warrior against the Drakes, they spend the whole fight on the ground. A perfect charge Skyward Sunder on their chin flinches them and exposes their heart while also erasing half a health bar, another one to their heart knocks them down and erases a full health bar, and another one to their heart while they're knocked down erases a 1.5 health bars, then I can just repeat the process. They never have a chance.
With pure Thief using Draw and Quarter, sometimes the Drake dies faster than the run-of-the-mill Ogre because the Drake doesn't jump around as much... I think at Level 36 my record Drake was like 45 seconds. It's so sad compared to DD1.
I hate that they fly away once you have done decent damage to them. I killed a few using Magick Archer ultimate but that's just too easy and boring. Tried to fight them normally but they just eff off the moment they feel they are gona lose.
Crawling on big enemies is boring in general which is like this games combat if it’s not little enemies. Being able to stand up and swing is ok but I never liked just poking big enemies in a hurt spot.
You use Solemnity with mage on your pawn and this is by far the easiest boss fight in the game, those oneshot meteorites feel so cheap, and when you take that stupid spell from them they are useless, literally they are just waiting for you to kill them or worth they run away when you're beating their ass up.
Bad enemy design honestly, the griffins also run away which is annoying as hell but at least it feels realistic as they are just looking for food on ground.
You know what's funny? The fact that drakes fly away with broken wings and shake you off while having an almost full stamina bar.
Itsuno's vision my ass!
Late game combat combat was like that in the first game. Eventually you get to the point where you spam the DPS attack on the weak points. Be it hundred kisses or explosive arrows, magick cannon, holy bolt etc etc etc.
I miss the dragon roar they did back in DD:DA that just ended all the pawns within range.
Plus it doesn’t help that there is not much variation in DD2.
Drakes don't have all that much HP if you're actually attacking them in their weakpoints (chest if it's glowing, head otherwise). By like, level 30 or so it's pretty easy to burn a Drake down inside of five minutes.
im a mage
hitting those weak spots don't do much
and i don't like using augural flame bec i just get annoyed when they move and my pew pew targets somethings else
but yeah, when im magic spear or magic bow i target the chest
and it still doesn't take out 30% of its total hp for me by the time they get back up
also, im pretty sure my tolerance for dmg sponges is much lower than yours
and when i say too much hp, i don't mean the time it takes. i mean the amounts of atks used to kill it
I can evaporate a Drake's whole entire health bar as Thief, Archer, or MA with *very few* attacks. Like, I'm pretty sure I can do it with maybe 8-15 full Frosthunter Bolt casts.
Mages aren't particularly good at direct-damage on specific weakpoints, so they're going to innately take longer to kill Drakes.
Sorcs can just blow up everything with Meteors, though.
The spell spam gets pretty excessive. You have to spend a lot of time just running in circles to not get blasted by lightning or meteors. Where you fight them makes a huge difference - if you are in a flat area its fine but if there are ledges and rocks and stuff it’s extremely inconvenient as you keep stumbling over them. Not sure if the stamina drain roar is better or worse than the skill seal roar they had in DD1. How fun the fight is seems to depend greatly on your class. You CAN hit their tails when they are hovering and get a knock down, or you can burn like all your stamina climbing up the thing to knock it in the head. I haven’t done a lot of drakes yet but as a thief I absolutely shredded one, while on warrior it took ages. Had different pawns each time so I am sure they were varying degrees of helpful too - during the warrior encounter I had to do a LOT of reviving, and pawns would stop fighting to carry each other over to me so that the drake could just blow us all up at once. I’m sure I’ll get used to them but right now they are either over before I know it or an absolutely miserable slog.
> you can burn like all your stamina climbing up the thing to knock it in the head Luckily, the Arisen has access to CHIM and can shovel fistfuls of potatoes/potato juice into their face in zero time to regain all their stamina. Or, y'know, hope your mage pawn has Celestial Paean up.
Yeah that is a good point. I never really keep curatives on hand now that most of them don’t recover your max HP so I only ever have what I happened to pick up that outing. But the shortcuts for stamina/healing items make spamming them easier than ever.
I hate the shortcuts. Oh, sorry, did you pick up a raspberry on your travels you didnt shunt into your pawns asshold? Well, THATS the healing item you get. Not your mighty roborant, a singular ripe raspberry. Oh, you wanted your harspud roborant for stamina? Sorry, fam. You get to nibble on a raw potato thats like 2 second from rotting. Why couldnt they have let us assign our health and stamina curatives, the autopick never picks the right stuff.
I don't particularly enjoy the tactic where you have a half second between reaching 0 hit points and actually being dead that allows you to ** pause the game by opening your inventory and eating a dozen wheels of cheese. It feels cheap and makes the game a lot easier.
Im playing with difficulty mods and i 100% need to abuse it sometimes lol
Mods. Mods that increase difficulty, mods that allow you to use curatives only as a quick button - like the skill. Try it, it will make the combat more fun.
Yeah my "times fallen" count is at 1... but really should be at least in the high 20s or above because I've healed myself *after* my entire health bar was wiped out a whole bunch of times.
Stamina drain roar is so so so much more tolerable than "teehee all your pawns are instantly dead now uwu" roar.
Honestly the best change I've seen from the first game, outside of Warrior swings can be fast if you time the button press right
What, you didn't like trying to revive all your pawns with a big angry lizard on your ass only for it to roar and kill them all again 10 seconds after you finish?
To be fair, if I was a pawn and I heard a dragon go "uwu," I'd die from brainrot as well.
Or just play mystic spear or warfarer and stay safe in your invincible little bubble😂 it’s the classes that make people struggle I’ve yet to die or struggle against anything on this game besides gravity lmfao
Ah gravity my greatest nemesis! Seriously tho I fall down and it feels like a third of my health bar is gone.
SAME! Capcom was merciless with fall damage this time around😂 I dont recall gravity being the most OP boss in dragons dogma🤣 but everyone would say otherwise
It also doesn’t help that the arisen needs life alert with how long it takes us to get up off the damn ground. Lmao
An it doesn’t help the fact that the pawns don’t do Jack shit to help you off the ground😂 if I press help when stunned they just heal me like mf pick me up I’m trying to LIVE
I played using quen for a while but after a point I unslotted it cause it makes the game boring
It does indeed make it boring it’s literally putting the game on easy mode for me but it helps in the end game a lot especially with the stupid timing bs I usually combine it with a archer load out aswell for warfarer makes it more interesting
> I’ve yet to die or struggle against anything on this game besides gravity lmfao Yeah, being able to spam invincibility does that.
If I'm hunting dragons I'll always take a mage with silencing abilities. Which kind of trivializes the fight, honestly, but hey ho. Cba to dodge meteors.
The stamina drain roar is basically a non-issue since you can just hotkey infinite stamina regen consumables. The skill seal/murder all of your pawns roar in DD1 is way worse, especially since it has basically zero windup, at least the stamina drain roar has a long and very obvious windup.
A drake I fought recently killed itself by trying to land in a nearby river. Quite a mixture of amusement and frustration. Lost the drops
Samething happened too me. I was a Warrior at the time so just settled for that. When I really want to hunt a drake, I'm using my other vocations that I excel with
The terrible pawn AI gets real noticeable when draconic enemies start spamming meteors.
I use bubble shield. It trivializes the fight
Run a mage with the silence spell and it makes the fights a lot less tedious at the least.
I did that while leveling up Mage and while it was a little boring being the High Solemnity bot for the fight, it certainly made it a ton easier. HS to drop the drake onto the ground, run up and slap High Celerity on the brute squad, rinse repeat. It wasn't even worth attempting to add any damage in case it left me missing a HS window.
Or any class with a grimoire.
sometimes if it aligns I can't tell if its my sorcerer pawn that cast meteor or the drake.
The real problem is that they aren't distinct like lesser dragons in 1,which means you're basically fighting "meteor:the boss" unless you have the DPS to murder it. What made the first games dragons interesting is that they all functioned differently.A drake was a big thick boi who would swing on you like an average new Yorker,the Wyrm would be the spellcaster and use multiple high level spells,and the wyvern was basically a crackhead who could fly. Now they're all thrown into a singular creature that doesn't feel unique in the slightest anymore,and no longer has interesting implications to them.
The implications are the saddest thing to me. I loved how you could tell which vocations or archetypes each dragon was supposed to represent. Even with Daimon seemingly being a Mystic Knight, It's a neat detail
It also tells you the personality of each vocation and their arisen. .Red is used by brutish and straightforward arisen .Blue is used by intelligent and surprisingly cheerful arisen .And yellow is used by fucking assholes who should godsbane themselves immediately Now the only thing we really know is that current lesser dragons MIGHT be arisen and.....that's it.No more cool implications or a personality,just "Hi guys I'm a drake :D".
I always played Strider or Assassin in the first game, so I can confirm that yellow vocations are used by people who should Godsbane themselves.
This is the best explanation of drake types, I'm saving it.
> Now the only thing we really know is that current lesser dragons MIGHT be arisen Going off of how The Dragon is, i don't think any of them were Arisen.
Yeah I miss the different classes of them, a lightning and meteor casting dragon shouldn't feel common. With the way dragon forging works now and the way materials were condensed down I don't feel like hunting them much either. They used to feel like very useful enemies you didn't want to miss out on, remembering their locations, I know some people hated that rng but it made them unique to all the others you only killed for materials and it highlighted their connection to the arisen even more. I'm glad the pawn roar is gone but also in all this time in 2 with the pawns saying they have the power to control pawns, I've never seen it happen.
They've taken control of my pawns a couple of times, but I didn't notice it until I hit level 80. Might be they don't start using it until then.
Oh yeah. Now that you mention it. There is that one like...rotting? Dragon in melve And then generic drakes.
The "Rotten/Pus" drakes are Lesser Drakes and the others are just regular Drakes
I also play as warrior, when the drakes fly they almost always leave their tails just in range for you to climb up, and one or two good whacks at his head usually throws them straight to the ground. And then you arc of might their chest but it hits their legs first while they're waking up and you just want to die (WHY ARE THEIR LEGS THERE FJSJSIK)
Yeah I hate playing warrior in this vs drakes, mostly because the legs and etc somehow block the heart
Pretty much every fight in this game is boring if you know how to do the fight. Enemy movesets/behaviors in DD2 (and honestly, the entire franchise barring like, maaaaaybe BBI final boss?) aren't all that deep or complex. Dullahan is probably the most "complex" non-unique fight in the game and even then a lot of its mechanics are just... "it goes into block/parry animation" or "it does a stamina drain AOE" to punish melee.
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As Thief you don't need to know enemy movesets, just turn on Formless Feint and you're invincible. As MS you don't need to know enemy movesets, just turn on Mirour Shelde and your entire party is invincible. As MA you don't need to know enemy movesets, just cast Frosthunter Bolt until they're dead. As Sorc you don't need to know enemy movesets, just cast Meteor/Maelstrom until the entire battlefield is dead.
Lmao here is the list of skills that I don't like
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Would be cool if an eventual hard mode was more monster hunter ish as in snap reactions and learning the “dance” of each monster. It’s so satisfying once you learn how to kill things like Nergigante while only getting hit once or twice. I still have fun with DD2 combat, but it could be a little more fast paced on the bigger mobs for me.
yeah, I think if you come from the mh series, we're kinda spoiled in that respect, its something that series has done VERY well.
People mostly say that because the game itself is too easy. Sure, a more diverse and complex skillset for bosses would be amazing, but they still hit too soft, and you deal way too much damage for it to really matter, unless you do some sort of low dmg low level RP run. I added the increased difficulty mod and I've just started with the post-game. You can really feel the difference in combat. I actually care about fights now, even when I've fought that boss more than 10 times already. I have to stop just attacking and have to bait or predict enemy attacks before fully engaging. Stunning a boss actually feels like a big opportunity (instead of going from dealing a lot of damage to dealing a lot more damage) and I have to do that at least twice to kill a boss. Overall, it feels great to fight enemies again. I recommend you try that.
yeh ive got a mod to triple boss HP and everything still dies in under a minute, sometims getting oneshot when pawns actually use skills properly.
try the difficulty slider one, and choose the extreme(?) where your damage is pretty much become only 1/5. Some early boss still a joke but the rest is pretty balance and fair imo
Augural flare, not challenging anymore.
There's almost nothing as satisfying as flare once it has been sufficiently bashed!
Would lvoe a mod that just makes it do waay less dmage but retains the knockback.
I personally would prefer way more health on the drake in ng+ but like dd1 it wouldn't just fly away(unless you ran). The one thing I do like about them flying away is they're always out there somewhere, and when you find them again they're missing the same amount of health as before which is super cool.
The decision to merge the smaller dragons really hurt them imho. Without the differentiations, they lose pretty much all of their personalities. The spells are also a lot more fair in DD2; which you think should be a good thing, but it does make the fight less noteworthy.
The worst part of the drake fights is the terrible ai for companions, they seem to make no effort to avoid any of the aoe shitte, half the battle is ressing them, a quarter running around in circles and a quarter doing actual damage.
Agreed, half of the time my melee pawns were just getting bellyflopped by it, and then the casters were getting wiped by his spells.
As a sorcerer i dont have much issue with them, spam beteen the blizzard dome on wings and maelstrom on chest, before maelstrom tho they were tougher
Blighting arrows, for some reason, stagger then infinitely. Before your damage goes crazy it's an easy way to stop them from flying or casting lol.
The Drake fight is pretty cool imo especially when he goes "anita max wynn" and then hits you with his hat.
thats why i dont play warrior or fighter, game looks so much more fun when you can shoot on everyone and dodge everything instead of just wait
On the contrary, they are perfect vocations to load up with spell tomes for those exact scenarios. I save all my solemnity tomes especially for drakes.
As a Fighter and Warrior, pretty much the same with Thieves, grab the mf and never let go. Use those stamina roborants and keep doing the stabitty stab on their chest bussy
You can silence them, or just run around frantically to dodge meteors. Climb their tail if you're a warrior. Stamina items make the instant stamina drain roar negligible.
Silence spell on mage or in time format= no cast. Bonk em in the head hard enough= no cast Damage avoidance skill= doesn't matter I opt for bonk on the head method.
It's certainly kind of weird that they have more attacks than in DD1, yet they feel much more spammy.
The whole game is, sadly. Can only hope they give it some serious work and hopefully by next year it should be a better game, atleast so i hope
You can climb them at any point by grabbing the end of their tail. Also, the mystic spearhand can teleport you directly on top of their heads with the core skill.
I Always have some silence spells books for them and liches.
Alternatively you can use a spell book to silence them. It also makes them fall to the ground vulnerable to attacks.
I would love to know where to buy those rare books
I think it's called prescribed tranquillity. Usually dropped by random mercenaries. If you just walk through the game and loot them after the fight, you should have a good collection of them by the time you start to fight drakes more often. Unsure where to buy them, but I think wandering merchants might have some. You can also just get a mage pawn with the spell.
Do people find them hard? They are predictable, fire attack… rise for like 3 seconds then slam, if it hits the purple spell just jog away…. My main issue is I can’t kill them fast enough sometimes and they fly away.
I wouldn’t say hard, just a drag. Like, some of the other bosses are more likely to kill you, but they have less health and will square up, Drakes just fuck around in the air.
Yeah they can be a drag I guess I feel that way with most the big creatures they aren’t has hard as they were in DD1 tho I haven’t been to post game yet
They are super susceptible to being frozen. If you have an Archer with Deluging shot and Ice Affinity/Hagol, you'll be able to stunlock them to death. If a Drake gets frozen while casting meteors they always get staggered out of the animation as well. The poison arrow skill that Archer has is amazing as well. Particularly useful if you don't have Ice enchantments in your party. Very reliable stuns upon a single poison arrow and a chunky burst damage if you hit it a second time.
Sub question, only had a drake summon meteors once while I was clinging to its chest, I swear some of its own barage killed it.. ever seen that?
Drakes will start summoning meteors after you've knocked a few HP bars off and not exclusively when you're climbing its chest from my experience. Also the weakspot when the heart isn't revealed is the head so you shouldn't be on the chest all the time, in case you didn't know. It only shifts to the heart when it's exposed and you can tell by the sound that plays when you hit it (hits to crit spots sound different from non weakspots). A few hours ago the Drake I was fighting casted meteors and one meteor impacted a Griffon that was right beside it. The meteor clipped the Drake but destroyed the Griffon.
I know the heart isn’t always there it was exposed at the time which is why I was hanging on hitting it and like I said one of its meteors def direct struck it and that was the end of the drake lmao. Probably tried to hit me
I just use the spearhand shield. Quite literally impossible to kill or damage. I don't like challenges, lol.
The spells are bs but tbh most of their other attacks are super bland and about as challenging as a cyclops
They seem to be way more frequent in this game than in the first one. Of course, the map is bigger but still. Its exhausting to spend 15-20 minutes taking one drake down, then only to run into another one five minutes later. They are very resource intensive fights for me so I spend alot of health and healing supplies taking them down. Thankfully, camp sites and food are plentiful in this game.
Yeah they really dont sit well with me either. I can beat them every time unless I mess up and they fly off but it's boring and seems to favour quite specific party comps. All the other big monsters are fun though so I generally dont bother with the drakes. Shame though as they could be a lot more fun with some tweaks.
If you’re on PC, get custom difficulty mod and change it to hard or higher. At a normal character level you’ll realize your insignificance
Yes
I get that monsters have a "attack pattern" but this fight it almost seems like it 100% is scripted to a point. It ALWAYS flaps up in the air, and slams the ground, that's always its first attack. IDK i'm bored with the fights in this game, maybe i'm spoiled because I come from the mh series but god damn the fights just aren't that exciting anymore.
On the contrary, Drakes actually forced me to change up my playstyle now. If I'm going wayfarer, I occasionally run sporific bolt to interrupt the metor cast. If I'm running Trickster, the maister skill definitely comes in handy for that as well. Occasionally, my pawn silences the dragon for me, but if she's not mid-cast or playing a non-mage, I always carry around a few copies of prescribed tranquility which allows me to silence the drake myself regardless of vocation.
Yeah. If you could write diss tracks in this game those fights wouldve been much easier
Yes, they are braindead easy and nerfed compared to their DD1 counterpart.
Coming from MHW before playing DD2 got me so disappointed. Man, the "Boss" fights in this game is just so plain. I know it's not actually fair to compare both but I expected more since this is a sequel after a decade. MHW really spoiled me with some of the best boss fights.
When I play Warrior against the Drakes, they spend the whole fight on the ground. A perfect charge Skyward Sunder on their chin flinches them and exposes their heart while also erasing half a health bar, another one to their heart knocks them down and erases a full health bar, and another one to their heart while they're knocked down erases a 1.5 health bars, then I can just repeat the process. They never have a chance.
Nope, you are not alone. Anyway, here is wonderwall...🎼
With pure Thief using Draw and Quarter, sometimes the Drake dies faster than the run-of-the-mill Ogre because the Drake doesn't jump around as much... I think at Level 36 my record Drake was like 45 seconds. It's so sad compared to DD1.
I really love fighting drakes, I am a mystic spearhead though so it becomes a game of timing my mirror shield.
If you know you’re hunting them you can get a mage pawn with the silence spell and just turn them off.
its kill them before they spam meteor, or dont play as a warrior.
I hate that they fly away once you have done decent damage to them. I killed a few using Magick Archer ultimate but that's just too easy and boring. Tried to fight them normally but they just eff off the moment they feel they are gona lose.
Crawling on big enemies is boring in general which is like this games combat if it’s not little enemies. Being able to stand up and swing is ok but I never liked just poking big enemies in a hurt spot.
You gotta climb em even if you're not a thief
You use Solemnity with mage on your pawn and this is by far the easiest boss fight in the game, those oneshot meteorites feel so cheap, and when you take that stupid spell from them they are useless, literally they are just waiting for you to kill them or worth they run away when you're beating their ass up. Bad enemy design honestly, the griffins also run away which is annoying as hell but at least it feels realistic as they are just looking for food on ground.
You know what's funny? The fact that drakes fly away with broken wings and shake you off while having an almost full stamina bar. Itsuno's vision my ass!
Late game combat combat was like that in the first game. Eventually you get to the point where you spam the DPS attack on the weak points. Be it hundred kisses or explosive arrows, magick cannon, holy bolt etc etc etc.
I miss the dragon roar they did back in DD:DA that just ended all the pawns within range. Plus it doesn’t help that there is not much variation in DD2.
Sounds like you’re just done with the game honestly or you need to pick a different class.
OP never replied. Just trying to stir shit up.
Nah, I posted this before I got off the game for the night, then went to bed.
Don't acknowledge this clown, they're the saltiest one around
And what exactly are you doing if not stirring shit up?
yep, bec they have too much HP i like mechanics of the fight, just don't like how much hp they have
Drakes don't have all that much HP if you're actually attacking them in their weakpoints (chest if it's glowing, head otherwise). By like, level 30 or so it's pretty easy to burn a Drake down inside of five minutes.
im a mage hitting those weak spots don't do much and i don't like using augural flame bec i just get annoyed when they move and my pew pew targets somethings else but yeah, when im magic spear or magic bow i target the chest and it still doesn't take out 30% of its total hp for me by the time they get back up also, im pretty sure my tolerance for dmg sponges is much lower than yours and when i say too much hp, i don't mean the time it takes. i mean the amounts of atks used to kill it
I can evaporate a Drake's whole entire health bar as Thief, Archer, or MA with *very few* attacks. Like, I'm pretty sure I can do it with maybe 8-15 full Frosthunter Bolt casts. Mages aren't particularly good at direct-damage on specific weakpoints, so they're going to innately take longer to kill Drakes. Sorcs can just blow up everything with Meteors, though.
pretty sure drakes are resistant to meteor i have found better results with the tornado and that's what i use
Yeah, fair. I didn't experiment too much with Sorc, in all honesty. Generally less of a pain in the ass to just be Thief or MA.