The Direfrost Keep consists of five boss battles that all require intense healing or savvy tanking skills. As with many of the other dungeons in The Elder Scrolls Online, a party comprised of ranged damage dealers (DPS) will have it easy. However, if your party is primarily melee DPS classes, the run will be a little more challenging.
How to Beat Teethnasher the Frostbound
If you go into this battle with a group of ranged DPS classes, it’s not overly difficult. The boss inflicts significant damage with every attack and uses a good number of area of effect (AoE) attacks that hit any party members in close proximity. Ranged DPS can handle this boss with relative ease so long as the healer keeps the tank alive through all of the damaging attacks. It’s also very important that all Power Attacks are dodged, as they can kill a well-geared tank in one shot.
With a group of primarily melee DPS classes, this can be a difficult battle. Because many of the damaging AoE attacks hit melee DPS classes while they’re attacking the boss, you need to move around a lot. This drastically cuts the amount of damage you can inflict. In many cases, it’s best to kite the boss around in order to avoid much of this damage. It may be a longer battle, but it’s a far safer strategy.
How to Beat the Guardian of the Flame
The Guardian can be a bit of a chore for the tank and healer. He randomly attacks party members with damaging attacks. When this happens, the tank will need to reestablish hate control and the healer will need to keep all party members at near full health throughout the battle. While it’s unlikely any decently geared player will die from a single attack, the lower their health, the more risk you take.
Block the Guardian’s Power Attack, but try to stay to the side or behind it to avoid the AoE attacks. If you’re hit with the frontal AoE, it causes slow and inflicts moderate damage. It can be dealt with and isn’t overly difficult to heal, through, but if you move behind the boss as often as possible (especially the tank), the attack is much easier to avoid.
How to Beat Drodda’s Deadlord
Like many other boss battles in The Elder Scrolls Online, fighting Deadlord is easier if you have a party of ranged DPS classes. The boss uses an AoE flame that appears around him. With ranged DPS classes, only the tank needs to worry about the flame AoE, while the DPS classes can attack uninterrupted. However, with melee DPS, it’s important for the tank to move the boss out of the flame as quickly as possible so the DPS classes can continue attacking without taking damage from the flame. Other than this strategy, simply make sure to block the Deadlord’s Power Attack and this fight isn’t much of an issue.
How to Beat Garmath the Bold, Lord Agomar and Orva Direfrost
This is a tricky boss battle because you’re fighting against three bosses at the same time. While there are numerous boss battles in which the main boss spawns adds, the adds are almost always weak in comparison to the main boss. However, in this case, all three enemies are bosses. While they’re not overly powerful individually, they’re all more troublesome than your typical add.
The most important aspect of this boss battle is to remember that as each boss dies, the remaining bosses become considerably stronger. For this reason, you should take them out at the same time so they die as close to simultaneously as possible. You can split up the party, but that strategy only works well if you have a good healer and your DPS classes can keep the boss off the healer. If this is not the case, it may be better for your party arrangement to have the tank gather all three bosses, while the healer (with a bit of help from the DPS classes — assuming they have healing abilities) keeps the tank alive.
Watch out for Agomar’s charge attack, which moves in a straight line across the area. In addition, Orva uses circular AoE flame attacks, similar to those of Drodda’s Deadlord. Avoid these attacks, and make sure whichever party member is fighting Garmath blocks his Power Attack.
How to Beat Drodda of Icereach
Drodda is a mage class boss, who randomly targets party members with his magic. As with many of the other battles in this dungeon, the healers will have their hands full as the boss attacks various party members. In addition, the boss moves around quite a bit, which makes this fight much easier for ranged DPS classes than it is for melee DPS. Melee DPS should be ready for the movement and follow the boss accordingly.
At multiple times throughout the boss battle, Drodda will charge up a large AoE attack. It’s crucial that all party members avoid this. There’s enough charge time to get out of the way before Drodda executes the attack, but all party members need to be paying attention to ensure they see the attack as it begins to charge. As long as the healers keep the party alive through Drodda’s random attacks, and all party members avoid the large AoE attack, this battle should go smoothly.
