274 replies to this topic

[DwarvenNoble86]

I quick read through some of these responses and it seems to me to be the basic solid strategy. I just found one flaw in it. The Wraith (for me) won't stick to my tank. I don't know if it's because of the rules of shapeshifting (it resets it's threat meter) or what but during the first portion (before shapeshifting) it sticks but afterwards it will randomly decide that my mage and rogue and dps two-handed warrior are so tasty.  

It is getting increasingly infuriating to group them and move them in order not to be instantly killed. I can't tell you how many times I've shouted obscenities at the screen.  lol. Anybody else have this issue and a solution, I would greatly appreciate it.

Also, I have beaten the creature btw, but for story purposes I went back to do it again (I'm sure most of you can guess why) but it came down to the very last staff shot. 

[murgotroid]

This got so much simpler on normal.  I think my problem was that I would get bored with it on hard and stopped paying close attention to what was happening. 

[Parrk]

I haven't tried this fight on nightmare yet, so I can only offer a few things I noticed that may or may not work on NM.

This is an archer's fight. You have Varric there, prioritize his survival over your main.

The idea that this is a burn-him-down fight ins kinda misleading. You have all day long if you can stay away from him. The terrain is your friend. You can fit into nooks that he cannot, and putting a structural element between you and him defeats his tractor beam..

KITING IS RIDICULOUSLY OP IN THIS GAME.

This is a cyclical fight of basically: Punch you hard, blow up, roll around,, repeat. The phase switches seem to be hp% rather than time-triggered.

Sync your team's nukes such that every other cycle you can force him straight to "pile-o-rocks" phase.

Edited by Parrk, 10 March 2011 - 07:47 PM.

[DwarvenNoble86]

Parrk wrote...

I haven't tried this fight on nightmare yet, so I can only offer a few things I noticed that may or may not work on NM.

This is an archer's fight. You have Varric there, prioritize his survival over your main.

The idea that this is a burn-him-down fight ins kinda misleading. You have all day long if you can stay away from him. The terrain is your friend. You can fit into nooks that he cannot, and putting a structural element between you and him defeats his tractor beam..

KITING IS RIDICULOUSLY OP IN THIS GAME.

This is a cyclical fight of basically: Punch you hard, blow up, roll around,, repeat. The phase switches seem to be hp% rather than time-triggered.

Sync your team's nukes such that every other cycle you can force him straight to "pile-o-rocks" phase.

Kiting is very powerful.  As it should be because your rogues and mages die instantly in alot of cases with boss battles. If they get engaged, that is.

I have to say again (this is for me maybe) but the archer approach is nice but won't work without constant paus and manuevering because I have had the Wraith cornered with my tank constantly taunting, and he's turned around and rolled clear across the room to kill my mage.  Something with that is just wrong.

[ref]

I did it, after about 4-5 tries on Nightmare (PC). I problem I had is that the fight takes FOREVER. Damage is so little, and I swear it took me about 30 minutes to do. My comp: Aveline, Anders, Myself (Archer) and Varric. The above strats is generally what you do. The micro is intense, I had them on Hold almost all the time, and moved Aveline to the boss whenever I needed to when he teleported.

Edited by Refara, 10 March 2011 - 09:40 PM.

[Splicur]

It took me a ton of tries on nightmare to execute, but I didn't expect this fight and my party definitly wasn't build for it. No magic resistance at all...running rogue hawke(daggers), Aveline tank (hadn't gotten elemenal aegis yet either), Verric (sub build for obscure/scoundrel for misdirecT), and bethany who I have mainly for support (deep creation tree).... Strat I used was simple:

Warrior would pull in, and I'd use stonewall after his first melee which would 99% of the time absorb all damage from the stupid kick, than go into a strife mode while verric and bethany would autodown the boss with my rogue playing very passive. Every other teleport I had stonewall so the one inbetween I'd normally be okay taking one hit and heal through it easy enough (of dance to avoid it).

second phase (When he explodes and adds come out) I had bethany use Hex and haste while my rogue just obliterated the boss from behind. Bethany, verric would pretty much 2 shot the adds so all I did was have ave taunt and start running in circles picking them up.

Once he came up and ball phase started, just avoid the ball, and since his smack after the ball is a target abillity and you can't out range it, I'd also use stonewall every cooldown to midigate damage while dancing my other 3 party members around until the next ground phase. Second ground phase I was able to push boss into a 3rd and dead phase...I'm pretty sure any party comp will work on nightmare if you made it this far. Just be sure to have some types of buffs, debuffs, and everything you shoulda been using all game so far.

[Foolie2]

10 tries or so on nightmare. I think it took three burn phases to finish him off in the end. My Rogue-Hawk swapped between un-talented archery most of the time and dual-weapon during the burn phase. Haste + Dual Weapon during the burn phase does some excellent damage.

[Sabresandiego]

I am going to post a video soon showing how I beat him on nightmare.

Edited by Sabresandiego, 11 March 2011 - 06:43 AM.

[Elinnassar]

I did this fight on hard last night. My party set up was

Hawke: Melee rogue
Anders: Heals
Verric: Archer
Aveline: Tank

Phase 1: tank and spank. Just make sure anyone besides Aveline is not in front of the boss.
Shard phase: Stand Behind pillar.
Adds: I split up my dps, had Hawke take out the adds close to me, and Verric and Anders took out the adds in the back I never really had any trouble with those guys and was able to get a couple of seconds to burn the boss after they died.

Phase 2: I would have Verric and Anders stand together on the opposite side of the room from the Rock Wraith, if the wraith targeted one of them I had lots of time to move out of it. My Hawke spent a lot of time not DPSing the boss here because I had to run out of the boss' explode and boulder abilites. Some of Hawke's big abilites tend to really help, such as mark of death and assassinate.

Go back to Shard phase, rinse and repeat.

The best advice I can give someone trying this is: Survivability is far superior to doing high dps and then dying. Don't be afraid to micro-manage your melee and move them out of crap. Also watch out for the rolling boulder ability, it will wreck a ranged if they get hit.

Overall, this was an awesome encounter. I enjoyed the challenge of it in a way that I haven't seen in Dragon Age yet (except maybe The Harvester in the Golems of Amgarrak on nightmare). I specifically liked that the fight was not merely killing a ton of adds, or having a boss that hit ridiculously hard. Instead this fight was about watching for abilities and acting accordingly. Well done Bioware

[Sheonite]

Ball phase HAS to be bugged, the wind up attack is seemingly unavoidable, hitting through LOS or across the room. :<

[Sabresandiego]

Here is how I defeated the rock wraith on nightmare.

The Ultimate Vanguard: Rock Wraith

Edited by Sabresandiego, 11 March 2011 - 10:49 AM.

[marz311]

Sabresandiego wrote...

Here is how I defeated the rock wraith on nightmare.

The Ultimate Vanguard: Rock Wraith

oh man, making hawke a warrior seems to make him so durable.  It's hard as hell with aveline tanking because she just gets hit too hard.

I ended up beating it with a glitch that i show in my video.

http://youtu.be/fuzQvI3d924?hd=1

[Lakona]

I just beat it on nightmare. Did pretty similar things to what has been said so far. My team was Hawke (archer assassin), Aveline (tank), Anders (healer), and Varric.

I found that Varric got stomped fairly early, I ressed him twice but he ended up dying a lot since I was being slack so I ended up three manning most of it.

I found Hawke's assassination talents helped a lot during the burn phase. Mark of Death (think that is the name of it) that makes the target take more damage was excellent for this fight (I only had the +25% damage version since I was still level 12).

The fight on nightmare took a lot of micro and took ages but like others have said, it is very simple once you get your strat sorted.

Protip: Carry some Breath of the Makers on you incase you need to respec to beat a certain encounters.

[Vengal345]

I found it really difficult to keep anders alive on my playthrough without intense micro. Im playing my hawk as sns dps so I don't have all of the tanking talents however I found that staying at range reduced the damage taken by alot. So I kited him mostly and on add burn phases I would send hawk and the dog on the adds with everyone else on the boss. This was minor damage overall.

Most the damage I ended up doing was during the gravity phases where my whole party was dead except hawk and verrick. Wasn't an elegant stray but worked rift as I ran out of potions.

[Junri]

Took 3 tries to kill Rock Wraith on Nightmare mode, but by the 3rd try I pretty much got the pattern down. It was actually really easy when I thought about it. Characters I used were Aveline, Anders, Varrick and Rogue DW Hawke (but I gave her a bow for this fight). I did not die at all or even came close to dying. Pretty much I sent Aveline to tank and spank it and left her to her tactics. Shield Defense must be on and she must have learned all her Damage resistance skills in her Guardian Tree. This pretty much guarantees she can't be knocked down or stunned by Rock Wraith's skills at all, even the giant rolling ball and the black hole. After that, I selected all my range units (Varrick, Anders and Hawke) and just kept moving them away whenever the Rock Wraith got near and pretty much just auto-attacked Rock Wraith to death. I dodged the giant nuke by hiding behind the pillars and stayed behind the pillars (except for Aveline which I sent out to keep attacking the Rock Wraith and allow the Profanes to get aggro on her and I pretty much focused fired the Profanes down with skills + auto attack. Black hole skill I pretty much hide behind the pillars and fire from behind it in that little gap where you can shoot without getting sucked down while Aveline due to her knockdown immunity just kept attacking the Rock Wraith. I healed with Anders whenever Aveline got down in HP or if my party got hit by an AoE somehow. Also used HP Pots whenever Aveline was low on HP and Anders was on cooldown. However, I tried my best to use Martyr as much as possible to lower my cooldowns when needed for Anders. Anders had Haste, which made the fight a lot faster.

[theenigma77]

On nightmare i have tried 3 times and got him to about 3/4 health left. He's such a beast. I do NOT want to lower the diff, but I also don't want the struggle of doing this ****** battle for 45 minutes.

[Sabresandiego]

The key to this fight is party movement. Watch my video and notice how I use the select all party members keys and the hold position key at various points in the fight. I was using hold position when he turned into a ball, and then free movement when he is centered. I tried to split up my ranged and my tank but giving control to your party can be a little tricky since sometimes you click on the ground and your party does not respond to your command. Anders as a properly specced healer is also a huge benefit to your party.

Edited by Sabresandiego, 11 March 2011 - 09:18 PM.

[Recycled Human]

Not to brag but I'm on nightmare and it took me two tries, I've rolled archer the whole time so micromanaging threat and moving party was pretty much the norm at this point. Team consisted of archer Hawke, healer anders, varric, aveline.

It took me a solid hour (of course pausing every few seconds to move party members around took up most of that) my damage output was also pretty low. Anyone else notice that it didn't seem to take damage in ball form and took even less in knight form if you attacked from behind? Meanwhile if you pelt its shield front it takes almost full damage...kinda random.

Also, I'd postulate it's better to ignore the adds until after the arw regroups. The last time he fell to pieces on me I focused fire on the nearby adds and then let aveline clean up the rest while my dps burned.

I was seeing very low damage for most of the fight, 10-12 then in select few points I went up to 100-200. Any idea why?

[BanditGR]

I was seeing very low damage for most of the fight, 10-12 then in select few points I went up to 100-200. Any idea why?

Different vulnerabilites for different phases/shapeshifts it seems. Took me 3 attempts as well on Nightmare, last one fighting for nearly an hour. The health of this boss is absolutely ridiculous, considering that it is a survivability fight. The entire fight is simply a huge timesink, once you learn his abilities and manage the initial aggro.

[Turnip Root]

I hate to admit this, but I turned the game on easy to beat him. I feel like such a wuss!

Next playthrough I PROMISE I'll beat him on hard, I SWEAR IT!

[Mengtzu]

The key appears to be the burn/adds phase. Failing to get a lot of damage on there massively extends the interstitial phases (and thus the fight).

I'd guess a party built to get the adds under control in the shortest possible time while still having enough single-target DPS to exploit the burn phase would be able to cut the time to kill down considerably.

[Sairagna]

On console it is impossible to defeat it on hard, you can't move your party around the battlefield effectively enough to keep health high for when you reach the transformation interphase

[RIP Tork]

 This is the first time I'm actually having trouble with the bosses on a console. Maybe i'll get the PC version when it's a little cheaper.... anyone knows, out of experience, the difference between console and PC?

[StingingVelvet]

Just played this section and it was my first death on normal mode. Quite hard at first, but easy once you get the pattern down.

[PrinceAmir]

I just finished this on Nightmare with Bethany, Anders, Varric and me (2h warrior).The fight was extremely easy but took alot of time.

I didn't do anything at all the entire fight.

Bethany died at some point due to getting one-shotted, so it was mostly Varric and Anders doing all the damage, with the help of the dog.

I found that the boss "teleports" to specific set locations, not random ones. He will try to teleport as close to you as he can, on top of you if possible. On nightmare anybody that got hit was a gauranteed death.

When he becomes a giant ball and tries to suck everybody in you just move out of sight. Your only damage output on this phase is the dog if it's up.

On top of that, the best places to place your ranged characters is in the center between the 2 pillars. They shouldn't be together, but split so that if he decides to roll your way in ball mode, the others can continue hitting him. If they stand between two pillars, these are locations where he won't teleport right on top of you.

During the entire fight all I got was 2 add phases. One with everyone alive that allowed me to nuke the boss when all adds were dead, and one with Bethany dead. The one with 3 people didn't work out too well as there were still adds up when the boss had built himself back together, but no biggie other than that.