Entrance

The entrance room, open and closed. If you click on the image and load the image page, you'll see the animated version of this image.

The initial path, from the entrance to the spot where you all drop down below and move over to where the real fight begins.

The entrance of Draigoch's Lair is a small rock cubby hole. After someone runs up to it, approximately a minute later the wall will crumble and allow access to the initial winding path.

Draigoch's eyes give off a beam of light, which lets you see when he is looking through the holes in the initial winding path for the source of the recent disturbance and the air currents that he can now feel. If he spots a person standing/moving in the light, he will breath fire for about 9k damage. The fire will momentarily set any dead bodies and piles of gold in the area on fire, so be careful not to walk on them until they go out (go around them).

At the end of the path, there is a slight depression in the floor which will break when 10 or more people stand on it. Standing at the end of the path will put your group outside of Draigoch's habitual lines of sight, so you won't have to worry about getting roasted and will allow you to clear dread, wait on cooldowns, etc. Getting enough people to drop through the crumbly part in the floor will not start the fight, so if your group has never run the instance before, now would be a good time to explore the corridors before heading out the middle and aggroing Draigoch.

When you're ready, eat, buff, hit tokens/scrolls, etc., then divide into your separate groups. For convenience, the 24-man tier 1 (with two claws) and the 12-man tier 2 (with four claws) will all be described as two groups, the main tanking group for Draigoch's head and the dps group for the claws. In actuality, in the 24-man group, you might have 3 different fellowships dpsing a claw or claws, but for convenience they will still be described in this guide as a single dps group.

Draigoch's Lair is comprised of three main floors. Dropping down from the intial entrance path will put people on the top floor of the lair, which is a full ring around the arena (although the ring will be partitioned off due to fire once the fight starts. Draigoch's front claws will grip the middle floor, rather like Helchgam's tentacles poking up in front of the path around Helchgam in Carn Dûm. Draigoch's back claws will grip the bottom floor (these will not be present in the 24-man tier 1 raid). The only way to move to a new stop spot or a new middle spot is to go down to the bottom, then head up. The middle floor has ramps going down to the bottom floor in a clockwise direction and up to the top in a counterclockwise direction.

Warning, running out into the gold in the middle when Draigoch is still clinging to the wall will kill a person.

Any ramps going upwards from the bottom floor in a counter-clockwise direction (located on the outside of the ring -- the side furthest from the treasure hoard) will take you to one of the platforms to the middle floor, while a ramp going up clockwise from the bottom will take you straight to the top floor. There are 4 ramps to the middle floor, and 4 ramps to the top floor.

Phase One

Once you've explored the three floors around the arena, send your tank group up to the treasure chest on top to aggro the head while the dps group gets ready to aggro a claw. Do not stand out on the platform, because anyone near a claw when the head is not aggroed takes 1k damage a second. Additionally, once the head has been aggroed, the dps group must rush in as a very tightly packed, figure-overlapping group, to reduce the distributed damage attack -- spreading out even 10 meters apart can have catastrophic effects.

Draigoch only deals Common damage. Sure, he breaths fire, but the fire does Common damage.
Draigoch is also vulnerable to Common damage.

Get the head under control (the tank doesn't have to stand all the way out on the ledge, just get close enough to get aggro -- this way the healer(s) can stand back away from him and not get hit.) The other part of the raid will start dpsing the 4 claws (two are on the second level and two are on the bottom level). Be sure everyone is grouped up before you start taking down the claws because the distributed damage attacks will continue to come while fighting a claw. Do not stand in a fire puddle if there is one in front of a claw.

Scorching

When Draigoch says something about scorching, he will move to a new spot. The tank group (and only the tank group) should run in the opposite direction, because Draigoch will set the floor on fire in the direction he moves. This basically happens just like the Watcher's scream, although the main tank does not have to pull Draigoch's aggro, he will just shoot flame in the direction he's moving in. The tank group should stay in their new spot and continue to tank/heal until Draigoch is knocked off the wall to the floor below. The tank group should then return to the treasure chest, as Draigoch will always return to this spot. If Draigoch ever pokes his head onto the top floor and a tank isn't there waiting for him, he will cause a cave in that will hit everyone in the raid for some heavy damage.

Once you dps down all the claws he will fall down to the middle area and you will have one minute twenty seconds to try to hit as many fellowship maneuvers as you can. (Three at the most, given the 20 second immunity after each successful fellowship maneuver, but if your group is inexperienced then likely only one.) You will repeat this pattern multiple times until Draigoch has lost about half his morale. After the 1 minute 20 seconds, Draigoch will return to the wall, rinse, lather, repeat as desired. Anyone in the dps group who is not in the fellowship performing a fellowship maneuver should be dpsing the crud out of Draigoch's body.

First Set of Fellowship Maneuvers

Each one of these fellowship maneuvers will put a permanent debuff on one claw for +100% Incoming Melee Damage, +50% Incoming Ranged/Tactical Damage. After all four FM's have been performed, all four claws will be permanently debuffed.

RYYYYR - Just a Flesh Wound

YYYYYR - First Blood

YYRRYY - Surgical Strike

YRYYRY - A Slight Sting

Second Set of Fellowship Maneuvers

These will debuff Draigoch's body. Each one will grant a stackable +25% Incoming Melee Damage, +12.5% Incoming Ranged/Tactical damage debuff to Draigoch's body (stacks up to four times).

RYRYRY - Exposed

YRYRYR - A snail out of its shell

RRYRYY - Deep Wound

YYRYRR - A chink in their armour

Third Set

Each of these will remove 5% of Draigoch's maximum morale. At around 9 million total morale, he'll lose a fair amount of morale from each of these four successful fellowship maneuvers.

RRYYRR - The Sound of Inevitability

YRRRRY - Twisting the dagger

RYRRYR - Sudden Death

RRYRRY - Stroke of Midnight

After the 12 necessary ones have been completed, continue as necessary, using whatever fellowship maneuver "floats your boat".

One tactic for the fellowship maneuvers is to assign each person a position, one through six. Then call out the numbers or names for whoever does red and have everyone else go yellow. For instance:

1. Alicia
2. Bart
3. Chris
4. Danny
5. Eddy
6. Frank

For the first fellowship maneuver, Alicia and Frank's names, or #1 and #6, would be called out and they would contribute a red in that position while everyone else did a yellow, thus creating the RYYYYR fellowship maneuver. For the next one, just Frank's name would be called out, or just #6, which would result in the YYYYYR fellowship maneuver.

After the minute and a third, Draigoch while get back up and the group should return to dpsing claws, etc. (Remember, he will always get back up at the section where the treasure chest is.)

After running out of the center, the dps group should not go straight out to fight a claw as Draigoch will say something about raining gold -- people should be out of line of sight for this.

Phase Two

Some groups have the tank run through the fire to get to the head (if the fire goes left to right, run left, as that's where he'll go -- if the fire goes right to left, run right, as that's where he'll go). Some groups send a second tank up top, so that there's a tank and a healer ready to go on both sides, ready to grab aggro on the head. The other tank and healer can then run over and join whoever is on the side that the head ends up on.

After Draigoch loses about half of his morale (gets down to about 6 million morale), he will transition to the second phase by saying "Cowards! Stand and fight me" at which point everyone (including tank and everyone up top as well) needs to be in the middle of the room because he will light the tunnels up with fire and you will take around 1.5k fire damage a tick if you decide to stay and get roasted. He will start to spin and breath fire (much like the building at the end of the Forges in Moria). The tank should be at his head, everyone else should be behind him, under his tail (much like the final part of the Watcher fight). He will bounce and make it rain coins on you during this phase as well so just keep heals going and put in some solid dps and finish him off!

Final Notes

When he dies, you need to get out of the middle of the room where you killed him. He will fly up and cause a localized cave in, possibly killing anyone in the middle. There are four chests in tier 2. Some people have reported the instance closing on them after five minutes, while others have reported that this did not happen. In any case, there may not be much time for dilly-dallying while completing /rolls.

At the end of the fight be sure to get out of the middle of the room!