I'm playing a character on master difficulty who is level 40 and doesn't have any shouts. The most fun dragon battles happen in villages; I play with a sword and shield, while my follower uses archery. There's always quite a few guards. The tactic I use is to draw fire while the dragon is flying/atop buildings and block the blast with the spellbreaker shield (which absorbs the entire blast) to protect the guards, while they shoot at it. When it lands, I do in to damage it as much as I can, and use timed blocks to say alive.

The best dragon battle I've had was when an Elder Dragon attacked during one of the large fort battles. It was goddamned chaos, with some fighting each other and others fighting the dragon, with fire all over. The only regret I have is not having the (SPOILER) call dragon shout to add even more to the chaos.

The ONLY dragon that is remotely challenging is the Ancient Dragon, because he one-shot kills me with the broken resistance buffs.

Otherwise my dragon battles usually go like this:

1. Conjure twin Dremora Lords.

2. Hit the dragon with Dragonrend.

3. Start blasting the Dragon with Lightening Storm.

4. Laugh as I watch one of the Dremora Lords get mauled and tossed through the air.

5. Keep blasting Lightening Storm until my Magicka is almost gone.

6. Go collect Dragon Bones from the ash pile.

I especially like their screech.

They've been a little less difficult than expected (playing on Adept), but I'm actually fine with that. One of the things that I've especially enjoyed has been the way they will involve others in the fight. For instance, this morning I went to Halted Stream and by the time the dragon was dead, so were all the outside bandits. It's just so dynamic! And I think that having regularly to reload would take away from that.

(Playing at Expert) Voted too easy because they don't deal enough damage (save for the Ancients, those bite!) and their animations are too drawn-out and easy to exploit. So long as they keep to the skies, they are challenging all right. As soon as they land (or you use that one auto-win shout, you know the one), they get cut down like any othe monster. Well, that's how my Archery/Two-Handed character deals with them anyway. My Magic character has a bit of a harder time, but she's just level 12 and doesn,t have much Magicka, and Destruction mostly svcks anyhow.

Oh, and it's not really smart when they decide to attacks nearby Forsworn, Giants or what have you. It does make for pretty epic battles, but gets them killed very quickly, especially by Giants. Hell, I have seen a (low-level) dragon be finished off by a passing Ice Wolf after the dragon killed a troll. How's that for humiliation?

Still, they remain pretty cool overall and are not too repetitive provided you don't use that one shout.

I'm level 43 and have not encountered an Ancient Dragon yet, but unless they're significantly harder than Elder Dragons, I think they're a bit on the easy side.

They're too pattern based. I have a melee character and I basically wait until they land and it's... game over for the dragon. Now, if they have dragons that take 10 min. to land, it would be a PITA, but would make the battle much more strategic for me and possibly have to take a companion with ranged capabilities, since my melee character doesn't even take a bow with him.

IMO, what they should have done is allowed the dragons to move once they are on the ground. If I saw a HUGE dragon run at me faster than I or any other NPC could run and try to bite my head off... I still think I would crap my pants with my level 43 melee character. Right now, because of the fact they stand still and don't turn quick enough, they basically become my personal lizard pinata when they hit the ground.

I do love the way they look though... they do look pretty nasty, but alas, they're bark is larger than there bite...

I wish they relied on more shouts, like using Unrelenting Force and Slow Time against you or making themselves Ethereal and dashing around with Whirlwind to avoid projectiles, but otherwise, their default abilities make them the most interesting fights in the game, with Dragon Priests.

EDIT: Wouldn't have hurt to give them more mobility once grounded, either.

Random dragons and ones in the open are awesome. Some dragons that attack at places like the College are kinda easy since there are so many places to hide. The reason they're easy to hide from is b/c after the 5th time fighting one in that location in a couple of hours of playing it sorta becomes routine.

But overall, I love them. Makes exploring along the countryside intense.

Holy crap, I just got done with a elder dragon battle _inside_ Solitude. I didn't even know that dragons could attack inside city walls, and it hasn't happened for me in 120 hours of gameplay.
Villagers were running around and being attacked, with the whole mess of guards at castle dour; it landed inside the plaze of castle dour, and three times right on the city streets.
My heart was racing to keep the dragon from killing any of the many villagers. Thankfully my tactics of drawing fire and bashing to stop the breath on the ground worked to keep anyone from dying.

A huge turnout for the after-kill spectacle:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/ZyV5c.jpg[/img]

You needed another poll option for me:

They are boring.

Dragon appears! And then dragon will do the following:
Fly around a bit. Find a place to land...land. I hit them and do some damage. Fly around a bit. Find a place to land...land. I hit them and do some damage. Fly around a bit. Find a place to land...land. I do a bunch of damage. They die.

This happens in exactly the same way over and over and over again until I want to stab myself in the eye with a quill that I've dipped in some really painful poison. There is no challenge to them because I never have to change what I do to fight them. I run next to a rock or something to protect myself when they blow whatever attack they have at me, I wait for them to land and then attack and that's it. Boring. Maybe they couldn't do much with them because they fly, but they are too easy and they happen way too often. I would have liked them to happen less often and for them to be harder than other bosses in the game. I've never been killed by a dragon and I have been killed by bandit boss type guys with their super war axes and shouty dragon priest guys. This is a problem for me and it makes no sense. The dragons should be super tough and epically fun. Not so boring I've started a new character to avoid their dull boringness.

they are too easy and the fights are way too repetitive. might as well be fighting flying cows.

this ^

I think they are poorly done. Their flight is jerkey and unpredictable. They turn on a dime often, not at all matching what their wings or head are doing. Its fun getting souls, but I doubt it will be after I have all the shouts.

Annoying, I find them extremely annoying.

im very happy about how they turned out for master level. they are a good fight and they dont just land next to you and let you wail on them. they are hard to kill unless you abusing the smithing/enchanting etc. anything lower than that though and they become to easy to kill. the drop in difficulty for dragons between master and expert is way to big.

Like most things in this game they're challenging at first but don't scale up very well as you get to higher levels. Overall though I really like the way they were implemented, that distant dragon roar sound effect is one of my all time favorite video game sound effects (ranks right up there with the Ymir nuke explosion from ME2.)

They're not great wrt animation, but I still love them. I'm extremely content with them. They put up a good fight (master), and yesterday for the first time I had to fight two at the same time (ancient and blood dragons) which was nuts hard with slightly nerfed character (I think I'm too powerful for my level, especially on this difficulty). They've also solved a couple of quest for me, quite by accident I'm sure. I love this kind of unpredictability. I just wish I would hide more from them and they would ignore them, as I tend to fight them too often.

What I love most is the sound work for them. The roaring echoes between the mountains are amazingly done.

Too easy, you can kill ancient dragon in couple hits before it hits you on master difficulty and when you're level 50... Waiting for mods to fix this.

I find them. . . sometimes satisfying, to my mind the problem is more in their scaling.

When you first encounter a new type of dragon they are challenging-ish but once your only a few levels away from the next dragon they are almost too easy. Assuming your not using Blacksmithing, Enchanting, or Alchemy very much.

I think Dragons would be a lot more difficult if they didn't go after Mudcrabs while I launch every spell I have at them. They aren't very good with priorities.

Indeed. They're just just too weak. Their breath weapon is a joke with spell resistance and that's assuming you don't just easily interrupt it. A wizard can keep a dragon completely paralyzed with chain-stagger. The only time dragons felt threatening was when I was starting to get higher level with my spellsword and I hadn't put enough perks into armor, so whenever it slapped me with its wings (which is a pretty quick animation that is hard to block) it would do a notable amount of damage. Not enough to kill me, just enough to force me to use a life stealing weapon against them. My spellsword has capped magic resistance and a spell breaker if it is needed (even though that is serious overkill for a dragon fight) and my wizard has high enough magic resistance to survive a breath assuming I don't just cancel it. They're too easy.

Dragons needed to evolve more as you leveled up. Elder Dragons should summon a leveled dragur boss and 2 leveled dragur minions when they land, and Ancient Dragons should summon a leveled Dragon Priest and 3 leveled dragur minions when they lands. That would at least be a step in the right direction.

Playing on master, no exploits. My opinion:

Dragons as they are right now are far too pathetic. They are not aggressive enough in their attacks and spend too much time flying instead of doing offensive flyby attacks, and there is not enough penalty to attacking them in melee considering how often they fall into the trap of landing often. They don't even have any kind of defensive, maneuver to propel them away while grounded.

Bite attacks should have equaled massive bleeding damage and staggering. Wing attacks should have had a strong chance of disarming weapons and knocking you backwards. Tail slam, considering how slow it is, should have had the power to launch enemies away like a level 3 unrelenting force. Landing near enemies should kick up dust and obscure vision. Taking off should stagger people off balance from the wind pressure. A roar at close range should daze enemies. And landing directly on a player should massively damage us and cause us to be pinned beneath them until we knock them off.

Breath attacks should have a much larger range and spread, making them able to hit multiple targets at once. All of a dragons attacks should have had a penetration factor, allowing them to bypass 50% of a player's armor rating and resistances. Dragons also stagger far too easily, and their stagger animation is way too slow....combined with being able to chain stagger them is pretty weak. They also, definitely need to use more shouts.

Even the weakest dragon, should have been a titanic effort to beat. The mere fact our character can beat dragons....dragonborn or no, without a small army should have been considered a miracle. The way dragons are presented now, they are hardly a threat since just about anyone can take them out, even the normal wildlife.

They look and sound great, but should be more difficult and less frequent.

Pretty dull, actually. The first few times it was exciting, but then as you level you realize you only really fight two dragons; Fire Breath and Frost Breath, they just have different skins and more or less HP.

As for difficulty, they can be tough early on, but since they only have a couple of offensive abilities, and no defensive abilities that I've seen, it's just learning the very simple patterns and then that's when they turn into a minor annoyance for the rest of the game.

They desperately need variety, more shouts at the very least.

there should be less shouts for the player more for the dragons.

The dragons are awesome but they are too weak and too numerous.

Dragons also need to drop more varied loot too so they arent boring

:D