Ulduar

[Paelos]

Old Gods, Siege Weapons, and 11 "Hard Modes"

This is Ulduar in a nutshell. I must admit that using vehicles in a pve setting to break through the massive defenses could be really fun or really annoying. It depends on the design of the encounters. What I like to hear is that bosses have difficulty levels like Sartharion and the drakes, which means you can choose how hard you want the fights and get better rewards for it.

[Lantyssa]

V0-L7R-0N

[Ratman_tf]

I go tonight for my first look at Ulduar. I knew better than to try right after the update went live. 

I shall return with opinions and possibly screenshots.

[Fabricated]

We didn't get a lot of time to try Ulduar last night. Got FL (duh) and Razorscale down and had to call it a night after a few tries on the deconstructor due to people having to leave.

Seems fun but a bit tightly tuned so far.

[Paelos]

It's not a joke. They obviously were butthurt over the Naxx comments and have turned up the heat on a couple of these encounters. I'm really hoping it's not being turned up with a bunch of cheese though.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's not a joke. They obviously were butthurt over the Naxx comments and have turned up the heat on a couple of these encounters. I'm really hoping it's not being turned up with a bunch of cheese though.

So far I'm not seeing cheese so much as encounters that make me think "those sons of bitches" like large packs of mobs with anti-aoe abilities. Well, maybe that's cheese but i like that you can't turn your brain off, even for trash

[Ratman_tf]

We made it past Flame Leviathan after a few tries, and then spend the rest of the night wiping on Razorscale. Only got it down to 86 percent, I think, on our best run. We made progress, but couldn't quite get the hang of it yet.

[Rendakor]

Went in the other day. I actually enjoyed the vehicle section, reminded me of Jackal and other old-school games. Got Flame Leviathan down, then for some reason they wanted to do Deconstructor next. So we slammed our heads against the wall for a few hours before calling it.

[caladein]

Coolest.  Entrance.  Ever.



We're up to this guy (Kologarn) on 25-man and on Mimiron in my 10-man group.

Also, fuck Mimiron.

[Sjofn]

In theory our guild will be boarding the Ulduar failboat this coming week. I predict at least one person will start to wail it's hard after we wipe once. Our guild generally has like no patience with the "learning" stage of raiding. Complicating matters is our totally random ability to one-shot fights we have no business one-shotting and then wiping 800 times on fights we've cleared easily before. 

[Ralence]

We didn't have enough healers online Tues for 25man, so we ran 2 10man groups.  Talk about a fucking disaster.  Leviathan is a complete joke once you figure out the "launch people on top" portion of it.  We wiped about 3 times at 20% before someone said "hey, what's this for?" and then it was a cakewalk.  Our other group did it without the launch portion and got the achievement after 4 wipes.

We then headed for the XT whatever the hell thing, which apparently had bugged trash just before it, which would instagib a healer randomly every 2 seconds and wipe us.  That lasted about 4 wipes before I saw the blue tracker with the "oops, trash before the XT is not supposed to all pull together, hotfix inc" message.

Our next target was Razorscale, which after trying twice seemed completely manageable, but by this time it was late and people were pretty irritated.

My observation is that there is very little room for error, and apparently 3/5 mobs were bugged as of Tues, at least on 10man, 25man has always had more room for error, so I'm assuming it's much less difficult.

[Phred]

It's not a joke. They obviously were butthurt over the Naxx comments and have turned up the heat on a couple of these encounters. I'm really hoping it's not being turned up with a bunch of cheese though.

Ya our main tank commented last night on the 10 man, saying he wouldn't really like to try it in the previous 10man gear. Somehow I doubt their testers had all T7 gear too.

So far in the first 4 bosses killed in 10 man uldaur, we've managed to score achievements for 3 of them, having no idea what they were or how to get them.

[Shrike]

What's worse is significant (as in vital to progression) enhance shaman loot is in those hardmodes. Most of which our guild can't be bothered with (Sarth who? It has drakes?).

We're taking a stab at it tonight. Not clear how (25 man or two 10 mans), and that will depend on who shows (or doesn't show) up. The hell of it is 10 man T8 isn't really an upgrade over 25 man T7. Still, there's a couple of good weapons in 10 man for shaman--especially important to me since KT won't drop the damned claw. I dread the vehicle shit, though. Absolutely dread it. Hate that stuff with a passion already.

[Fabricated]

So far in the 10-man:

Flame Leviathan: Retardedly easy on easy-mode after everyone knows what the buttons on their vehicles do. Hard-mode for this should be doable after a month of destroying easy mode.

Razorscale: Pretty easy IMO since we went in knowing fuckall about the boss outside of the fact there are adds and you need to use the harpoons as they come up, and we got it on the third try (with 1 wipe being me accidentally dragging my abilities off my bar because I forgot to lock them). If you can manage the adds properly and put a lot of DPS on the boss each grounding phase, you're gold.

Ignis: Skip it, this encounter is way overtuned IMO and gay. It sounds like fun on paper but all of his abilities seem to be fucking chain-cast to the point where he's screaming his emotes non stop after the first scorch. Fuck this boss.

XT: Doable, but don't 3-heal it unless all of your remaining DPS are good because -one- slacker will make you fail the enrage. We got really close 2-3 times but we had 3 healers, 1 DPS that couldn't control the adds right, and one bad DPSer. Make your OT swap to a DPS spec and have the MT tank the big pummeler adds. With 2 healers, 7 DPS, and proper add control I see this as being a fairly easy fight when people get used to it.

[Soulflame]

10 man, we've downed FL, Razor, XT, Kologarn.  Skipped Ignis because he's a right bastard.  Currently wiping on Iron Council, but it's doable.  Just need to get it done.

25 man, we weren't so lucky.  Lots of wipes on Razor, and XT basically twoshot the tank the one time we pulled him.  We haven't tried Ignis on 25 man yet, but I eagerly await the mayhem of tornadoes EVERYWHERE.

re:  Ignis.  Way overtuned is about right.  You have a tank on Ignis, a tank on adds, you have to have three healers, possibly more.  You can easily lose because your offtank healer gets potted, then he's out of range, GG.  I think our best effort was to get him down to 5 million health, from 7 million.

Also, fuck the trash in the antechamber.  That shit just isn't funny.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Also, fuck Mimiron's trash.

Fixed

[Paelos]

Yall are confirming my pain on Ignis.

[kildorn]

Complicating matters is our totally random ability to one-shot fights we have no business one-shotting and then wiping 800 times on fights we've cleared easily before. 

You say that like it's a habit of ours to refuse to die randomly, and noob it up on trivial shit.   

[Drubear]

So if the first boss is a vehicle fight, what's to keep the less-geared among us (smiles sweetly) from taking 9 of our friends in similar straits and working it? I can't believe toon stats mean >>nothing<< in this - at the very least your resistances, stamina, regen and armor (?) are taken into account?

[Xeyi]

The hit points of your vehicle is dependent upon the average item level of your gear.  I'm sure it's still very doable with alts and people with sub par gear however.

[Koyasha]

In theory it's also doable with less than 10 people pretty easily also.  Again assuming everyone knows what they're doing really well.  Throw a shadowpriest up on Leviathan and he can take out both turrets and keep himself up.  I went in to screw around last night and learn about it, with 6 people, and we got him down to like 75%.  If the demolishers are on the ball and can get a ton of blue pyrite thrown at him during the stun, it should only take one or two stuns to finish him off, even without people on the siege turrets.

[Shrike]

We only hit three bosses on 25 man last night.

Leviathan was--dare I admit it?--pretty fun and very easy. I'm shocked.

Ignis. Sucked. One of our guildies was stating that fight might be bugged, but it's a right bitch regardless. Hell, the trash are no prize either. I did get the Hot Pockets chop, though.   

We tried the whining boss (XTwhateverthehellitwas). We were short on healers at this point, but it seemed very doable. Sadly, three people (one was a healer, don't you know) had to bail at that point and our excursion into Ulduar came to an end. What really grinds me on Ignis is he's such a royal pain, but the miserable bastard has the only really good enhance shaman totem upgrade. Friggin' Blizzard.

[kildorn]

Ignis from all reports seems to be horribly horribly bugged (not losing stacks = perma huge damage, rollback to a version where the golems are practically unkillable due to stacks dropping too fast, melee on charge = oneshot random raid members)

I'm looking forward to our Uld attempt though. It should be a blast. I REALLY want to do Flame Lev. That looks like a hoot.

[Ingmar]

Ignis from all reports seems to be horribly horribly bugged (not losing stacks = perma huge damage, rollback to a version where the golems are practically unkillable due to stacks dropping too fast, melee on charge = oneshot random raid members)

I'm looking forward to our Uld attempt though. It should be a blast. I REALLY want to do Flame Lev. That looks like a hoot.

I wonder how over-signed-up we'll be...

[Fordel]

I'm graciously not signing up, for the good of the guild.

[K9]

Did Ulduar-10 tonight, got flame leviathan down after a few tries, seeing how stuff worked. The vehicle gauntlet is actually a lot of fun, although I can see it being a nuisance after a while. We ended up ignoring the turrets on top and nuking the boss down, since that seemed easier. When you put people up on top they seem very very prone to dying when they get knocked off. Anyhow, was much more enjoyable than I anticipated it being.

Did Razorscale, got to 40% on our best attempt; we had various problems with DPS being a bit slow, althhough I think we are yet to get an optimal tanking strategy for the adds. We were getting some overlapping waves on some attempts. How do you guys handle the adds on 10?

[Xeyi]

Did Razorscale, got to 40% on our best attempt; we had various problems with DPS being a bit slow, althhough I think we are yet to get an optimal tanking strategy for the adds. We were getting some overlapping waves on some attempts. How do you guys handle the adds on 10?

We gather them and aoe.  Anything else and they overwhelm us. 

The key to the fight seems to be the damage you can pump out when he lands in phase 1.  At that point we have our tanks take any adds round the front of him as his breath damages them as well while being easily healed through on the tanks themselves.  Everyone else switched dps to razorscale immediately, blowing all dps cooldowns, and moving around behind him.  After that it's back to gathering and aoe'ing adds, rinse and repeat until phase 2.

If your dps is taking off around 25% of his health every time he lands you're on about the right track, any less and you might struggle as you'll get more air phases than necessary.

[bhodi]

We got 25man razorscale down to 250k health before we wiped. Did 9 tries last night. Ugh. If you're curious to see fail in action, check here.

One thing I DESPERATELY need is an addon to track what characters in raid can provide those non-stackable bonuses, like Faerie Fire / Misery, Sunder Armor, air totem, etc. etc. I suspect that we aren't filling those slots in our raid correctly but I haven't memorized every single person's spec and what they can do.

How does everyone else do this? There has GOT to be a mod with a little list. If not, it's really really tempting to create one - I don't know why no one has before.

[Fordel]

http://raidcomp.mmo-champion.com/


-edit- seems to be slightly out of date.

[bhodi]

Yes, I am looking for something just like that, but in Addon form.

Bonus points if it can watch buffs/debuffs and tell me if someone isn't doing their job.

[Rasix]

Couldn't a WWS report track buff uptimes?

[K9]

WWS reports track buffs gained/lost and uptimes, just look in the "Abilities" section.

Bhodi, you're running with 3 holy priests for Razorscale? I've only tried him on 10, but there I was healing as disc and found it far superior to holy. There's a lot of raid damage, but it's distributed really randomly, so CoH and PoH were really inefficient for me. Pre-shielding 8 people in a rotation mitigates a large chunk of the fireball damage, and -3% damage taken to the whole raid is nice. Renewed hope is one buff you're missing for sure, and it's a pretty powerful one.

[kildorn]

3 Holies will step all the fuck over each other, really. I had mana issues pre-shielding large numbers of targets, but if it's a raid damage fight where I know the shield will be eaten, it's free. *shrug* It's just a waste when it doesn't get eaten.

[bhodi]

Yep, I know that 3 holy isn't optimal. I'd move to disc myself if I hadn't already stacked spirit gear. As I get Uludar gear, I'll very likely shift into disc to cover that hole. The other priests are also gear-bound.

Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of options for raid composition. We're doing everything we can to recruit, and we have a decent core (several of which were absent last night) but as you can see by the numbers, the people we're getting really aren't cutting it. The skill level for a lot of these people just isn't there which is why I'm wracking my brain trying to pull out every edge I can that doesn't involve slaving someone else's keyboard to mine. Ultimately, I'd like to ditch the other two holy priests and that resto druid - they're really slow on the uptake on both learning and reaction time for saving people.

WWS will tell me after the fact, but what I'm really wanting to do is look at the raid, see if there are any holes, and get people to switch to their dual spec or bring someone else in before the raid starts to fill that hole. I don't even know if it's needed in 25man, but I was curious to find out.

[kildorn]

As long as you aren't raid stacking, very few buffs/debuffs are hard to get. Grace/Sanct is one (disc priests or a pally buff are your only options), and the bleed increase is the other I can think of. Maybe totem of wrath, but I don't entirely know what it's crit does/does not stack with.

Mostly I think your raid just needs a better DPS rotation on a few people, and mainly reaction speed when the fight changes. The % time on in the WWS is really varied based on player, but I don't really like WWS stats on add-heavy fights anyways. It just seems like people weren't hopping back on razorscale fast enough during ground phases and the fight just took too long.