Ulduar Discussion Thread

[Pantalaimon]

Kologarn
(If doing damage to the hand is ostensibly the same as doing damage to Kologarn, why not kill the left hand (your right) after having dealt with the right hand?)

Every hand killed generates adds, which have a damage-ticking aura which is a gigantic pain in the butt. If they don't quickly get pulled out of the caster camp people swiftly start to drop.

[Jester]

Agreed. Ulduar is not "cleared" until every boss has been defeated in the hardest mode. Let's see how long it takes Ensidia to clear every boss on hard mode. The fact that they had to put a decent level of effort into defeating yogg is encouraging to me.

According to Mek's post, Ensidia does think that Yogg-Saron would be very tough on hard mode, and if Algalon is tuned even past that, it might give them some pause.

On the other hand, there aren't many bosses that have been easy enough to kill (IE not pre-nerf C'thun), but hard enough to soak up the collective efforts of the really dedicated raiders. Maybe this will be one (or two) of them.

-Jester

[Skandranon]

Update: my 10 man group just beat Yogg. It's not a bad fight but not too hard on 10.

Is 10 man easier than 25 man if you only have 10 man gear? I realize you probably can't answer this. I'm aware that 400 DPS more on the 6 or 7 DPS folks in a 10 man group that has 25 man gear is hard to mentally just throw out.

It's not a gear thing. Entire fight elements are missing from 10 man versions in order to make them easier. Moreover, many of the remaining mechanics punish you for not spreading out or for having too many people close together, and the rooms are the same size on 10 or 25. That means 10 man groups can often counter these abilities without even trying, whereas 25 man groups take multiple casualties and can potentially fail the enrage timer.

[Quark]

The only thing I'm wondering so far ... they nerfed Razorscale already. Seriously?

It'll be nice to try a less buggy Ignis tomorrow ...

[Concillian]

The only thing I'm wondering so far ... they nerfed Razorscale already. Seriously?

Every Tier needs a couple faceroll bosses... I mean besides Kologarn if you blow up both his arms.

[Mordekhuul]

XT-002 Deconstructor (Heroic)

Damn but the enrage timer is short on heroic. We had no trouble coming in close to the 5 minute mark on our first 10 man kill last week, but we absolutely failed over 20-30 pulls to beat the enrage on heroic mode.

We ran 6 healers, 2 tanks, rest DPS.

We simplified the tantrums by rotating Divine Sacrifice cooldowns.

We ended up tanking him with our MT standing on the top step so that he was at the bottom step, helping bottle-neck the adds during the add phases - this seemed to help a LOT.

We had ranged DPS/healers split into two groups - one east, one west. Ranged players ran south and to the center when they had bomb debuffs so they could be easily healed and wouldn't run towards where anyone was off killing adds.

We had melee players run south so they stood inbetween the two ranged groups as their bombs went off, making it trivial for healers to keep them topped and again avoiding them running off and messing with anyone killing adds.

We kept ALL dps on the heart until it despawned (unless mages noticed adds coming in earlier than normal from a quadrant) to maximize DPS time on the heart, and because adds typically take a little while to head over.

We ended up using bloodlust at 27% because we were having issues with the 3rd add phase...seemed like more adds than the first two, though could have been bad luck 8-9 pulls in a row.

On our best pulls he was enraging at something like 10%.

I have no idea what we'll do differently on Wednesday, although perhaps the mini-patch change today that allows his adds to be slowed (snared) will allow us to allocate less of our DPS to killing adds, somehow, and more can stay on the boss full-time?

Our raid comp can be seen here: http://wowwebstats.com/1bipisyg3tciu

Perhaps 10% more DPS isn't as much as it feels like and we'll get it easily on Wed once folks have had another couple of night's sleep to think on it, but damn =)

That said, our 2 nights in heroic were nice this week. We did FL+1 (kept flame tower active), Ignus was pretty easy, and Razorscale was REALLY easy.

[RTM]

The big problem I see is that you have no rogues :shuriken:

Sounds like heroic Ulduar is actually... well, heroic.

[Lissa]

XT-002 Deconstructor (Heroic)

Damn but the enrage timer is short on heroic. We had no trouble coming in close to the 5 minute mark on our first 10 man kill last week, but we absolutely failed over 20-30 pulls to beat the enrage on heroic mode.

We ran 6 healers, 2 tanks, rest DPS.

We simplified the tantrums by rotating Divine Sacrifice cooldowns.

We ended up tanking him with our MT standing on the top step so that he was at the bottom step, helping bottle-neck the adds during the add phases - this seemed to help a LOT.

We had ranged DPS/healers split into two groups - one east, one west. Ranged players ran south and to the center when they had bomb debuffs so they could be easily healed and wouldn't run towards where anyone was off killing adds.

We had melee players run south so they stood inbetween the two ranged groups as their bombs went off, making it trivial for healers to keep them topped and again avoiding them running off and messing with anyone killing adds.

We kept ALL dps on the heart until it despawned (unless mages noticed adds coming in earlier than normal from a quadrant) to maximize DPS time on the heart, and because adds typically take a little while to head over.

We ended up using bloodlust at 27% because we were having issues with the 3rd add phase...seemed like more adds than the first two, though could have been bad luck 8-9 pulls in a row.

On our best pulls he was enraging at something like 10%.

I have no idea what we'll do differently on Wednesday, although perhaps the mini-patch change today that allows his adds to be slowed (snared) will allow us to allocate less of our DPS to killing adds, somehow, and more can stay on the boss full-time?

Our raid comp can be seen here: http://wowwebstats.com/1bipisyg3tciu

Perhaps 10% more DPS isn't as much as it feels like and we'll get it easily on Wed once folks have had another couple of night's sleep to think on it, but damn =)

That said, our 2 nights in heroic were nice this week. We did FL+1 (kept flame tower active), Ignus was pretty easy, and Razorscale was REALLY easy.

Bloodlust/Heroism on the first Heart phase, all DPS should be pounding on the heart for the first phase, healers should also be DPSing the heart as well during the first heart phase, you want to get as close to 50% as possible so that you go into heart phase two as well. Every 33% damage done to the heart = 10% of XT's life. Save potions of speed for the second heart phase (so you can get close to 25%). The reason you don't want to blow down to 50% immediately after heart phase 1 is to give your AoE dps time to kill the scrap bots and boom bots so they can help get a solid second heart phase.

[Mordekhuul]

Bloodlust/Heroism on the first Heart phase, all DPS should be pounding on the heart for the first phase, healers should also be DPSing the heart as well during the first heart phase, you want to get as close to 50% as possible so that you go into heart phase two as well. Every 33% damage done to the heart = 10% of XT's life. Save potions of speed for the second heart phase (so you can get close to 25%). The reason you don't want to blow down to 50% immediately after heart phase 1 is to give your AoE dps time to kill the scrap bots and boom bots so they can help get a solid second heart phase.

The 33% = 10% thing probably explains why when we switched to bloodlusting at 27% instead of during the first heart phase we didn't see a difference in when the second add phase started (most of our pulls until the end we bloodlusted just before the first heart phase).

I expected it to take a lot longer to drive into the 2nd add phase when we switched to a 27% strategy, but it really didn't....he was pretty close to 50%, but not below 50%, either way.

On rogues (heh) - yeah, we have like 1.5 rogues that raid, and one of them has a hurt back and is out, so we are used to running with zero rogues. Most of our rogues swapped to hybrid classes (death knight) where they can fill more than one role, still put out high DPS, and bring more utility (their view of things).

=)

[Lissa]

The 33% = 10% thing probably explains why when we switched to bloodlusting at 27% instead of during the first heart phase we didn't see a difference in when the second add phase started (most of our pulls until the end we bloodlusted just before the first heart phase).

Something to also keep in mind about the heart, it takes double damage while out, a double reason to save all speed enhancements/cooldowns for heart phases. And don't be afraid to have melee DPS break off to kill scrap bots if they get too close. Each scrap bot adds like 0.5% health (maybe 1%, not 100% sure) back to XT.

[Mordekhuul]

Something to also keep in mind about the heart, it takes double damage while out, a double reason to save all speed enhancements/cooldowns for heart phases. And don't be afraid to have melee DPS break off to kill scrap bots if they get too close. Each scrap bot adds like 0.5% health (maybe 1%, not 100% sure) back to XT.

The disheartening thing is that we were doing both of those as well =)

Thanks for the insights. I think we'll get XT on Wednesday or Sunday this week for sure. Snare'able adds means our DPS will have an easier time bunching them up, slowing them down, and killing them, and will probably let us avoid pealing our single-target melee DPS off the boss almost at all, boosting boss DPS.

[Mavfin]

The disheartening thing is that we were doing both of those as well =)

Thanks for the insights. I think we'll get XT on Wednesday or Sunday this week for sure. Snare'able adds means our DPS will have an easier time bunching them up, slowing them down, and killing them, and will probably let us avoid pealing our single-target melee DPS off the boss almost at all, boosting boss DPS.

It's always fun to pop one of the walking bombs in a pack of scrapbots and watch them all die at once.:D

[Mordekhuul]

It's always fun to pop one of the walking bombs in a pack of scrapbots and watch them all die at once.:D

Hey, at least I manged to assign our prot warrior into the MT role so I could do all of the off-tanking. Its a lot more fun than sitting in one spot staring at robot feet (no matter how buff - the guy works out a lot!) for 6 minutes =)

[Concillian]

It's always fun to pop one of the walking bombs in a pack of scrapbots and watch them all die at once.:D

I've seen strats that suggest tanking him near one of the scrap heaps just so the bots from the other side will tend to be very clustered. Also your AoE assignments are more focused, since they can cover both sides from one location and deal with them in series rather than parallel.

I don't know how much it would actually help, that's just one thing I saw mentioned a couple times.

[Mordekhuul]

I've seen strats that suggest tanking him near one of the scrap heaps just so the bots from the other side will tend to be very clustered. Also your AoE assignments are more focused, since they can cover both sides from one location and deal with them in series rather than parallel.

I don't know how much it would actually help, that's just one thing I saw mentioned a couple times.

Wouldn't bots spawning in that scrap heap reach him near instantly?

[Mordekhuul]

Have fun in Ulduar this week everyone!

With some experience under our belt my little 10 man killed 6 bosses in 3 hours last night, which is one more boss than it took us 6 hours to kill last time, so it's definitely fun to get back in there with some experience in the group.

Can't wait to hear how folks do with the later bosses =)

EDIT - Oh, and don't be scared of doing a FL hard mode just because Blizz reportedly buffed him. We figured we'd blow through on easy-mode to get to later bosses last night, so we didn't talk to the dude that activates the towers and just rolled through with an idea that we might try killing him without repairing....when we got to him about 4 of our vehicles were pretty low on life, so we repaired - big mistake.

With a week of heroic and non-heroic FL work behind us the encounter is such a massive joke on the order of the Karazhan chess event if you don't either leave towers up or skip repairing, so do yourselves a favor and at least choose to not repair =)

Also, I think we'll just "not repair" and do easy mode next week because it saves time over killing 1-3 towers, but when we do I think we'll have less vehicle damage if our siege engines hang back with the demolishers and we spend more time kiting the big guys and less time ramming and mixing it up in melee with them. Just a tip.

[Concillian]

I'm guessing they will nerf the enrage at some point in the next week or two.

So let it be written.

So let it be done.

[Swiss Mercenary]

A good place to tank Deconstructor is on the stairs behind him. Also, the key for the enrage is having healers DPS the heart, and 100% of the DPS' attention focused on it. Clean up the bots after the phase ends - in the meantime, Shaamns, Mages, and Hunters can Earthbind/Frost Nova/Frost Trap the bots.

Update: my 10 man group just beat Yogg. It's not a bad fight but not too hard on 10.
It's not a gear thing. Entire fight elements are missing from 10 man versions in order to make them easier. Moreover, many of the remaining mechanics punish you for not spreading out or for having too many people close together, and the rooms are the same size on 10 or 25. That means 10 man groups can often counter these abilities without even trying, whereas 25 man groups take multiple casualties and can potentially fail the enrage timer.

I'm going to go ahead and say, however, that 10-man will punish you for having a "bad" raid composition. Take, say Mimiron 10. That fight's going to be a nightmare (Four hours of wipes, after we beat him on 25-man) if your hunter's a keyboard turner, and is unable to hold aggro while kiting Assault bots, and you have a 100% caster group (No Crippling Poison, no Kidney Shot, no Hammer of Justice, even).

Likewise, Thorim will give you a run for your money if you don't have enough beefy melees.

I haven't seen 10-man General or Yogg, but I'm expecting that neither will be particularly bad, anthough you'll again probably wish you had melee on Yogg.

Otherwise, most of the bosses are easier then on 25-man.

Hodir, Freya, Kologorn, Ignis, Razorscale, XT-Deconstructor are significantly easier on 10-man, due to either reduced raid damage in small groups, reduced DPS requirements, or both. The rest of the pre-General bosses pretty much the same, but I'll say that Mimiron 10 is probably harder.

On the subject of 25-man, I am extremely dissapointed by nerfs to Ignis, Razorscale, and Kologorn. The latter's now a loot pinata, and I think the problems most guilds had with Razorscale have to do with the strategies they use (As well as failing to understand important mechanics of the fight.)

[Mordekhuul]

On the subject of 25-man, I am extremely dissapointed by nerfs to Ignis, Razorscale, and Kologorn. The latter's now a loot pinata, and I think the problems most guilds had with Razorscale have to do with the strategies they use (As well as failing to understand important mechanics of the fight.)

I'm not. Those are early fights in Ulduar and there is plenty of challenge left even excluding hard modes.

On the topic of harder fights in 25 than 10 - I'd put Auriaya on that list for us. We two-shot her in our 10 man last week but took 3.25 hours to get a first kill in our 25 man last night. It was fun though.

I'd also say that both you and I have very little perspective on what is a hard 10 man fight, however. We out-gear the 10 man encounters. Phases are shorter for us, adds die faster regardless of how well they are picked up by tanks, and enrage timers don't really exist.

I'd also hazard a guess that your 10 mans, like mine, tend to be stacked with the right comps, where 10 man guilds like Lurkers on Terenas work hard to roster folks based on attendance history (to make sure everyone gets raid time) and have a smaller attendance queue to mix and match classes among, so I'm always really interested to read how they are enjoying the place =)

[Swiss Mercenary]

I'm not. Those are early fights in Ulduar and there is plenty of challenge left even excluding hard modes.

They are optional bosses, and Razorscale wasn't even hard to begin with. Ignis needed some tuning, but he's just a big baby now, after his damage was cut in, almost literally, half.

He was still a challenging fight after the "Melee people in the pot" was fixed... Now he just rolls over and dies.

On the topic of harder fights in 25 than 10 - I'd put Auriaya on that list for us. We two-shot her in our 10 man last week but took 3.25 hours to get a first kill in our 25 man last night. It was fun though.

Unless the raid is missing shamans, I'm not sure how she is difficult in 25-man - unless you're wiping on the pull (For which there are, thankfully a lot of solutions - a lot of room for creativity).

I'd also say that both you and I have very little perspective on what is a hard 10 man fight, however. We out-gear the 10 man encounters.

When we beat the Council enrage by 3 minutes, or Kologorn's arm dies before he can grip one person... I don't think that's 13 item levels of gear doing our job. I've also pugged the instance in 10-man on my alt, and my observations on which 10-man bosses are easy were reinforced.

One other thing is that healer gear is largely a non-factor for the 10-man fights I listed - and on 10-man, the raid damage is low enough that even undergeared healers can easily keep people alive through it.

I'd also hazard a guess that your 10 mans, like mine, tend to be stacked with the right comps, where 10 man guilds like Lurkers on Terenas work hard to roster folks based on attendance history (to make sure everyone gets raid time) and have a smaller attendance queue to mix and match classes among, so I'm always really interested to read how they are enjoying the place =)

My group is currently carrying a tank healer, an off-tank and a few DPS. Friends and family, and not particularly good players. Our raid leader's blood boils when we get to Mimiron, and the keyboard turners can't kite.

I can see groups having a rough time with him, when they lack a hunter, or heavy stunlocks.