Velah, the Red Dragon

The final raid boss of the Vault of Night series, encountered in Plane of Night raid which was introduced in Module 1: Dragon's Vault.

Velah, the Red Dragon

 * Type: Dragon
 * Race: Red Dragon
 * Alignment: Chaotic Evil
 * Boss Type: Purple Named - Very challenging raid boss
 * CR: Heroic, Epic
 * Resists/Immunities/Weakness: Immunity to fire. 200% vulnerable to cold on Normal, Hard and Elite. No vulnerabilities on Epic.
 * HP:
 * AC: Fairly low: 25 on Normal, and 45 on Epic.
 * DR: DR/Magic (Trivial to bypass)
 * Fortification: as of U11 (confirmed by Devpost)
 * Saves: Normal: Fort 18+, Will 18+, Reflex 18+.
 * SR:
 * Intimidate DC: Stationary monster thus cannot be intimidated with any effect

Melee

 * Attack Bonus: 60+ on normal (100+ on Epic)
 * Attack Damage:
 * Claws: ~90-130 slashing per hit on elite. Slightly higher on epic.
 * Bite: ~100-150 slashing per hit on elite. Slightly higher on epic, performs this attack less often.
 * True Seeing

Special Abilities

 * Special Attacks: Velah's Breath, Wing Buffet, Summons, Cometfall (see below for descriptions)
 * Special Defenses: Shield (blocks magic missiles) Fast Healing - This dragon is regenerating quickly, you must overwhelm it!. Ability to dispel debuffs placed upon her, each breath will remove any debuffs.
 * '''Detailed Notes on Special Abilities:
 * Velah's Breath: 100-300 damage on normal, 700-800 damage on Epic. Applies a severe debuff: Velah's Mark: 2 minute debuff that makes you take double damage from fire and a -30? penalty to reflex saves. So the first breath may not be enough to kill you, but the 2nd generally will be. The Breath also hits you with dispel magic (d20 + 15 vs 11 + caster level of your buffs or you lose them. On epic this isn't a huge concern since CL20 buffs = DC 31, she has to roll a 16 or higher to dispel you. Luckily you can easily avoid this: Simply hide behind one of the rocks and it can't hit you.
 * Cometfall: If your entire party hides behind the rock and does not engage Velah for ~20-30 seconds, she will become enraged and fast-cast nonstop cometfalls upon your party, destroying you. You must keep her engaged as often as possible to avoid this.
 * Wing Buffet: Simply deals 30-60 bludgeoning damage, no save. And knocks you down (DC20 Str/Dex save). Unlike the breath, simply hiding behind the rocks will not save you from this. Overrun/Knockdown DC: 20, Strength or Dexterity whichever is higher. Must make the save for each wing buffet attack, regardless of how close you are, even behind the rock. ''Previously this would send you flying off the platform into space, ultimately killing you and ejecting you from the raid. Was quite a severe penalty that was somewhat unpopular among players. However Turbine saw fit to change it into its current, less severe form.
 * Summons: Velah will summon 2 "Velah's Claw" every 45-60 seconds. Although these appear to be fire reavers - they are actually Flesh Renders, and behave exactly like them (except they are weak to ice spells, unlike renders), including their lack of fire immunity and favorite ranged attacks - mass inflict wounds. As such a Deathward buff is recommended to negate the damage.

Strategy (Epic, but should apply to all difficulties)

 * Before approaching Velah - decide on several key players. One to serve as the "main tank", one or two to handle trash, one to call the breath, as well as healing order and potential back up for these critical roles.
 * Main Tank: You really can't tank Velah like you can other raid bosses, but it's still important to designate one for a couple reasons:
 * 1) To give the healers a target to focus for mass heals, as well as the other melee an indication of who to stand near if they are in need of healing.
 * 2) To always have a player ready to engage Velah and be kept alive at all costs, in case trash becomes a problem and other melee are called in to help.
 * Trash killers: "Velah's Claws" aren't terribly difficult at first, but they continuously spawn and will eventually overwhelm the party if not dealt with, so always designate at least 1 strong player to handle them. Arcanes are often ideal for this, as spells like wall of fire, ice storm and polar ray are all very effective at taking them down, and they can generally self heal to some degree. But melee can serve just as well given they can self heal well, or have some attention from a healer.
 * Breath caller: Velah's breath can devastate and kill your entire raid group if not dodged. So, knowing when it's coming is critical, to allow you to avoid it. Many players cannot see the tells (smoke/fire coming out of the nose), so having someone call it out on voice chat can be a great help.
 * Where to stand: Ideally you separate your melee and healers, so that there is less confusion in targeting, and less chance of trash getting in the way of the melee dodging the breath. Recommended setup is healers behind the right rock (where it's quite possible to heal all the melee on the dragon with zero risk to themselves) and melee on the left rock while dodging breath. The person handling trash will generally run around between the rocks as necessary, but if they prefer to be stationary, they should do it on the right rock near the healers.
 * Timing: Each breath comes at exactly 30 seconds from the moment someone engages Velah, so if you're lagging or can't hear voice chat, you can also try to time when you need to run away. Exactly when she is considered "engaged" can be tricky however.
 * Velah's Eggs: Once Velah reaches about 20% health, she will spawn roughly 8-12 eggs, in random locations around the battlefield. If these are not killed within 30 seconds, they will turn into extremely powerful fire elementals. Kill them as fast as possible as they are devastating if not dealt with. The eggs are rather low hp trash mobs, so they can be eliminated quickly. In addition, when attacked, they spew out fire which deals ~75-150 fire damage, and also regenerations a similar amount of spell points. So ideally have your entire group minus the main tank, and 1 healer on the tank stay together and eliminate the eggs quickly, so everyone gets healing, and as many as possible get back spell points. Although she won't commetfall during this stage, keeping the tank up on Velah can still be wise, especially if he has guard proc such as a favored souls Condemnation active.
 * During this stage, the breaths will take a little longer to happen, ~45-60 seconds.. So don't rely on timing, and instead keep an eye out for the smoke/fire from her noes. Luckily she will not summon eggs and breath at the same time, generally she will summon them right after a breath or AI reset - EG, whens she's ready to do a breath but no one is in range so she doesn't.
 * Egg stats/type: The eggs have roughly ~500-800 hp and are typed as fire elementals. As such Banishing weapons work well, as does anything which deals cold damage, as they take 150% from it. Ideal arcane spell tends to be Frost Lance, as it deals 3 hits, and thus allows 3 shots of SP regen.
 * Fire Elementals: Should you fail to kill some of the eggs, the elementals have extremely high hitpoints and thus can't be melee'd at any reasonable rate, they can however be insta killed and have low fortitude saves.. So have your casters on alert and ready to do so should you miss some eggs.
 * Backup plans: Should your trash killers die, you should call in all non-tank melees to help clean up. The tank should stay engaged on Velah at all times, as if she is not engaged for a certain period of time, she will destroy the party with comet falls.
 * Notes for normal difficulties: Being Velah's hit points are not very high on normal/hard/elite, you may simply be able to kill her outright in 1 round without needing much strategy. That said, you may still want some players behind the rocks encase of lag or known bugs killing your party (such as automatic breaths when players disconnect near the end).