Gruul vs. the Dragonborn

[Breccia]

"Okay, everyone repair and head out to BRF."
"Dave's not here, man."
"What? Crap. Anyone know a tank?"
"Um, I know someone. He might be able to help, I think."
"What is he? DK, druid, warrior?"
"He's the Dragonborn."
"...what?"

GRUUL vs. The DRAGONBORN


So the question is simple enough: The Dragonborn of legend has faced incredible foes, like Alduin the World Eater, Miraak the leader of the Dragon Priests, and Harkon the Vampire Lord. He defeats ancient and legendary dragons every day, and can fight multipe giants or draugr death lords like it was nothing. could the Dragonborn of SKyrim realistically tank a raid?

FOr this discussion we'll be using:
A) An effectively maxxed-out Dragonborn of level 251, thereby having every single perk in the game, prepped and ready for this
B) Gruul, the simplest and most predictable boss in Blackrock Foundry. If you can't tank Gruul, you're probably not tanking anyone else, either.

SCALING

Translating between the two games requires a focal point. I decided on these two items:
1) Iron Sword, the first, and weakest, weapon you find in Skyrim
2) Longsword, a white-quality weapon that, based on its level of 21 and compared to Blacksmithing, is probably made of iron itself.
The base damage of Iron Sword is 7, and of Longsword is 15. Seven points of damage in Skyrim is fifteen in WOW.

DAMAGE/THREAT

If a tank can't hold threat, they're no good to the raid. We're not asking if the Dragonborn can solo Gruul, after all. There is no threat mechanic in Skyrim. A single-player game has limited need of such. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt with the same threat multiplier as any other tank in WoW.

That leaves damage. With every crafting skill at 100 and every perk in them, it's possible to make a dragonbone mace with a base damage of 63, the strongest customizable one-handed weapon in the game. 100 One-Handed skill with all the perks, maximized Fortify One-Handed gear and a potion on top of that, and you get a grand total of 376 damage. Factor in the damage scaling, and this becomes 807 weapon damage per swing. More, actually, because maces in Skyrim bypass some armor.

But now let's drop an enchant on it. Being a tank, he's likely bringing Absorb Health, and since effects like Slow and Paralyze won't work here, let's make the second effect Chaos Damage -- 50% each chance for fire, frost, and lightning damage. Again, with maximum skill, perks, a set of unique armor and a potion, you could get 34 Absorb Health and 42 Chaos Damage, which in turn, averages 63 per hit. Scale that up too, and you get an average magic damage of 274 per strike.

1,081 damage per hit isn't all that bad. It compares to 670 tank blade that Gruul himself drops on Normal mode quite favorably, which does 879.5 damage on average. The mace swings faster, but the Dragonborn doesn't get special attacks like Death Strike or Revenge. In any event, the damage is at least high enough to make holding threat realistic, just not necessarily trivial.

DAMAGE REDUCTION

If there's one area where the Dragonborn is exceptional, it's reducing the damage dealt. Since he's tanking, we'll load him up in heavy armor, and with his skills, he could easily hit the cap without doing anything drastic (such as using Alteration "skin" spells). But then there's blocking. Blocking in Skyrim is 100% successful on attacks that hit the shield, and they can reduce the damage in a multiplicative fasion. Upon hitting both caps, the Dragonborn will take 97.75% reduced damage from a blocked physical attack.

It would also be easy for the Dragonborn to craft and bring items that add both fire and magic resistance, hitting the cap for both of those as well. They, too, stack multiplicatively, so he takes 97.75% reduced fire damage, and 85% reduced nature damage (unless "being slammed by rocks" counts as "poison").

Combined, this makes the Dragonborn take far less damage from any one attack than any tank in the game.

COOLDOWNS

One of the Dragonborn's major issues in a raid environment is the lack of useful cooldowns. Racial and Standing Stone abilities have a 24-hour gametime cooldown, making them effectively useless here. That leaves Shouts, and most of them won't work on Gruul (as they don't work on dragons). Of note are Become Ethereal (8 second self-banish effect, 20 second recharge) Marked for Death (an armor reduction effect, handy for group damage) and Slow Time (which allows for flawless blocking).

CONSUMABLES

Another strength of a maxxed-out Dragonborn is their ability to make, and use, powerful potions. I'm not sure drinking hundreds of potions in one fight is that great of an idea, but making "flasks" of FOrtify One-Handed and Fortify Heatlh is pretty easy to do. In addition, the Dragonborn can bring Potions of Ultimate Healing, restoring all health instantly. Speaking of...

HIT POINTS

And now the bad news. Well, questionable news.

The Dragonborn starts at level 1 with 100 hit points, Each level from there you can put 10 points into Health, or Magika, or Stamina. Let's say this level 251 Dragonborn put points into health 200 out of 250 times, for 2100 health. The rest go to Stamina and Magika.

Add a powerful potion and enchanted items, and you get 500 more. Top that off with the Blessing of Arkay and end up with 2,625 Skyrim Health, or enough damage to take hits to the face, without armor or a shield, from that monster of a mace SIX TIMES. That's a lot of health as an abstract concept, considering most real life humans could take no more than 2 or 3 hits from a low-quality iron club before dying. This is Sunwalker Dezco's level of pain tolerance at a minimum.

But factored into WoW terms, it's 5625, or 6187 raid-buffed. Uh oh.

THE NUMBERS

Low on max health as he might be, the Dragonborn has enormous damage reduction. Gruul appears to melee for about 120,000 damage pre-armor in LFR, N, and H. The Dragonborn can block 100% of these, reducing the damage to 2,700 hit points. Two in a row, and the Dragonborn is barely standing. A third, and he dies.

So, can the Dragonborn tank a raid? Techincally, he already has. It was called Wrath of the Lich King, where most bosses would stomp tanks flat in three unhealed hits.

However, even the weakest healing-over-time spells anyone in your raid could cast will trivially heal the Dragonborn to full every second. Gruul will never kill the Dragonborn with standard melee attacks as long as you have even a half-assed healer on the case. If those attacks come spread out enough, Become Ethereal might help.

THE REALITY

Unfortunately for the Dragonborn, there's more to life than melee attacks. Even most blockable or magic attacks could overwhelm his incredible defenses and kill him. Take Inferno Strike and Inferno Slice. On LFR, the Strike does about 25% more than a melee attack, and is blockable. Assuming the other tank taunts quickly, the Dragonborn lives. However, on other difficulty levels, the Strike damage significantly increases. In Heroic, it does around 500-600k damage pre-armor, reduced by the Dragonborn's armor and shield to 12,375 (which is roughly double his health) and kills him instantly. Also, the Slice damage hits at the same time, denying even the 1 second any HoT would need to bring the Dragonborn to full health. Without a decent-sized group, Inferno Strike/Slash can easily kill him. And Become Ethereal, while a short cooldown immunity, takes 20 seconds to recharge, while Inferno Strike is cast every 18 seconds. Stacked external cooldowns would be required to save his life.

Other bosses won't be as forgiving. Unblockable physical damage, shadow damage, holy damage and Nature (but non-lightning, non-poison) damage are only partially reduced, 85%, so a hit for 40k WoW damage would kill him. Bleeds bypass all his defenses and would also almost certainly kill him.

It would be possible for the Dragonborn to tank a raid, but only on easily-predictable monsters, and even then, you'd be carrying him.

[Friendlyimmolation]

Couldnt he just do a slow time shout, a wind fury shout, duel wield two dragon bone daggers fully upgraded and do a shit ton of dmg?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Gruul the Dragonkiller. It took an entire raid of Dragonborn-powerlevel heroes to slay him.

[smackyslap]

You can't compare the two games in anyway and make it fair for either side

Dragonborn or people fluent in the thume don't have cool downs on shouts the dragonborn can just stay ethereal or just MIND CONTROL gruul with that one shout from dragonborn.

heck the dragon born could stack marked for death on gruul forever untill gruul has less the negative armor.

even if he can't solo a or tank a complex boss this alone makes the dragon born great utility.

[barackopala]

havent fought against the new gruul sadly (didnt like wow 6.0) but i'd bet that he'd fuck the dragonborn up

[Jpp]

You forgot priests spamming Clarity of will and pw:s on him.

[OrcsRLame]

Gameplay and lore don't really translate in any meaningful way. Lorewise, I'm pretty sure the Dragonborn would shit stomp Gruul. Game mechanics is a very flawed way to compare games, unless the mechanics and the story are linked in very concrete ways, like with Dark Souls.

- - - Updated - - -

I mean, to use an absurd example: If you did your same damage conversion between wow and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13, I'm pretty sure the numbers would drastically favor wow. However, based on what we see on screen in the final cutscene, Lightning is far and away more powerful than anything in the Warcraft universe.

Unless you'd like to argue that Gruul could survive Draenor literally blowing up.

[Dispraise]

There's a theory that every PC in an elder scrolls game is capable of, or has already achieved CHIM. In gameplay terms, that would mean he effectively has access to console commands.

Tilde, select Gruul, /kill.

Unless you'd like to argue that Gruul could survive Draenor literally blowing up.

Wouldn't be the first time.

[Justin-Sane]

dragonborn equips the sneak attack multiplier gear, uses the alchemy/blacksmithing exploit to make op enchanted gear, sneaks behind gruul, dual wield crit x128 sneak attack, one shots gruul. dragonborn shrugs, stuffs his face with cheese wheels and prances off to his next victim. Kappa

[Breccia]

You can't compare the two games in anyway and make it fair for either side

Actually, what surprised me while doing this was how close it was. I expected WoW's exponential power increase to dwarf the Dragonborn by miles, and it didn't at all.

Couldnt he just do a slow time shout, a wind fury shout, duel wield two dragon bone daggers fully upgraded and do a shit ton of dmg?

You can't use two shouts at once, and Wind Fury doesn't work on enchanted weapons. 90% sure.

dragonborn equips the sneak attack multiplier gear, uses the alchemy/blacksmithing exploit to make op enchanted gear, sneaks behind gruul, dual wield crit x128 sneak attack, one shots gruul. dragonborn shrugs, stuffs his face with cheese wheels and prances off to his next victim. Kappa

Gruul could survive a dual-wield x128 crit with the best daggers I could find, a dozen times over in LFR alone. That said, opening up a pull with the boss missing 7% health is hardly the worst thing in the world.

There's a theory that every PC in an elder scrolls game is capable of, or has already achieved CHIM. In gameplay terms, that would mean he effectively has access to console commands.

Tilde, select Gruul, /kill.

That...would be a different story. IDKFA

[Friendlyimmolation]

You can't use two shouts at once, and Wind Fury doesn't work on enchanted weapons. 90% sure.

Look at the greybeards, they can fire them out like its nothing. Pretty sure the Dragonborn could as well if not for game play reasons.

[Justin-Sane]

Gruul could survive a dual-wield x128 crit with the best daggers I could find, a dozen times over in LFR alone. That said, opening up a pull with the boss missing 7% health is hardly the worst thing in the world.

a dual wield power attack while sneaking is like, what? 5-7hits each doing a x128 sneak attack? No, I don't think so. Gruul would be dead instantly. That is of course if you factor in the alchemy/bs/enchanting exploit you can do it skyrim. If not, then I don't know.

[Sliske]

Gruul could survive a dual-wield x128 crit with the best daggers I could find, a dozen times over in LFR alone. That said, opening up a pull with the boss missing 7% health is hardly the worst thing in the world.

not really a fair fight if you use wow's numbers vs skyrims numbers. That would be like saying a hunter vs a hearthstone character. 1 multishot = all cards + hero dead. If all that matters is numbers then its just hands down that Diablo 3 characters are the strongest by far. You can easily crit for hundreds of billions with one ability

[OrcsRLame]

There's a theory that every PC in an elder scrolls game is capable of, or has already achieved CHIM. In gameplay terms, that would mean he effectively has access to console commands.

Tilde, select Gruul, /kill.




Wouldn't be the first time.

Draenor never blew up. It got wrecked, but there's plenty of landmass left. When I say blown up, I mean blown the fuck up, as in no debris capable of sustaining life. I mean more of something like this. https://youtu.be/WW3zD5QoL74?t=5m4s

[Aeula]

The dragonborn, all they'd need to do is pickpocket his weapon, summon a dragon, a storm and a zombie dragon and then just sit back and watch his health plummet. If it comes down to 1v1 then just chug health potions like a champion.

[LaughingMan]

+1 for quoting Futurama (even if unintentional)

Standing still and absorbing damage isn't really how combat was designed to work in Skyrim. I've never been in a situation where I've thought just standing and blocking a giant or mammoth was a sound idea. Then again, I've never really maxed blocking either. I would think a more effective strategy for the Dragonborn to take him down would be to keep a reasonable distance. Since he would have all the perks, it would definitely help to use magic, such as casting Mayhem on the council/followers that are nearby. He could also fly in on a dragon and make that fight him instead.

Or he could go the cheap route, get the Dark Brotherhood gloves, equip a dagger with the two highest damage enchants on them, equip armor with bonuses to one-handed damage, use muffle + invisibility, sneak behind him, and kill him in one sneak attack.

[smackyslap]

I just had a better idea the dragonborn could just exploit faulty AI!

[mickybrighteyes]

Draenor never blew up. It got wrecked, but there's plenty of landmass left. When I say blown up, I mean blown the fuck up, as in no debris capable of sustaining life. I mean more of something like this. https://youtu.be/WW3zD5QoL74?t=5m4s

you have a very weird idea of "blew up"....

Just because the debris is larger than you'd like doesn't make it any less of an explosion. The planet severely ruptured to the point where it only still exists because #magic and a wizard did in fact do it.


on topic:

the dragonborn can alter time and existence with their very will. Gruul is an oaf the size of a building. This isn't a contest.

[Drakhar]

You... spent way too much time on this. So much time that I don't want to tell you that your method for translating a character's ability across completely different games with distinct mechanics based solely on numbers is just... bad. Oh well good attempt, I appreciate the effort at least.

[mickybrighteyes]

You can't use two shouts at once, and Wind Fury doesn't work on enchanted weapons. 90% sure.

you can... you just need to have the cooldown refresh faster than the duration. an achievable feat actually via fortify restoration (any effect on gear is basically counted as a resotration spell).

also when looking at sneak attacks, the enchants are pointless as they aren't affected damage wise. the base damage, temper bonus and then all the multipliers.