Reasons for Outranging
Many of you will note that in Godslayer progression groups or more experienced groups, the main tank on the Lokkestiiz fight in Veteran Sunspire will often outrange Lokkestiiz instead of face tanking him like on the other dragon boss fights such as Yolnahkriin and Nahviintaas.
There are primarily two reasons for why main tanks do this:
1) Due to the mechanics of the fight which requires one of the two healers to successfully heal the DPS out of the "Ice Cages", it often becomes risky trying to always tank the Frost Breaths from Lokkestiiz.
Outranging Lokkestiiz will force him to spit out bolts at you which you can then reflect back at him with Defensive Stance. This not only is safer for you but it's also free damage via projectile reflection which helps the group DPS.
2) The 2nd reason why Tanks outrange Lokkestiiz (and we will talk more about this below) is to more precisely control the breath procs from Lokkestiiz.
Making sure to always proc the Frost Breath right before the tomb mechanics start or before the flight phase locks the boss in his breath animation even though the tomb mechanics or flight phase has been triggered from his health incrementals.
For example, this means if you proc his breath at 82% right before his 2nd Ice Cage mechanic occurs and the group can push him to 80% and below 80%, you not only skip the 2nd Ice Cage mechanic as this makes him go into flight phase but you also get more free damage done on the boss's healthbar while not having any DPS in cages for add phase/flight phase.
Controlling the Breaths
So when should you proc Lokkestiiz's Frost Breaths as the main tank?
This will often depend on your group's DPS so expect varying degrees of both timing and difficulty with groups that have low DPS and groups that have high DPS. Difficulty-wise, it's mostly about sustaining the Defensive Posture skill that you use to reflect Lokkestiiz's bolts back at him and of course the longer the group takes to push him towards his flight phase (80%, 50%, 20%), the more sustain issues you will have.
Timing-wise, again, it depends on your group's DPS. Sometimes you will proc his breaths at 84% or 82% for the 80% flight phase, etc.
Generally for most groups with good DPS, as a rule of thumb you can start with
84%
54%
24%
as the baselines then work it out from there.
You will also note as a main tank that, depending on your group's DPS, Lokkestiiz may sometimes trigger the next Ice Cages ignoring your attempts to proc his breath.
You will notice in the picture above that Lokkestiiz has 6 seconds left until the Ice Cages spawn and that he's at ~83% health. If the group DPS was low and he reached that health % when the Ice Cages spawn in 2-3 seconds, you may not have the time to trigger the Ice Cages as he will initiate the animation to summon those cages.