Ulduar

[Ingmar]

The important bit is you never want to run side to side when you're in the line with the other ranged; if you go straight back before you go sideways you never kite the beams onto anyone else.

[Merusk]

I wasn't saying that the other healing classes are gimped, just that it seems like stacking them doesn't work but you don't have that problem if you stack druids.  A small inequity but one that's there.

I agree on the GS glyph.  Dropped it on my heroics-only priest and I don't feel bad dropping it on the tank now.  No more "Ah crap, that was blown."

[kildorn]

Fuck Kologarn. And stacking priests on that shouldn't suck either. Anything with a raid heal should stack. Almost all our issues are when one healer is gripped, one is running from eyebeams, and the third gets overwhelmed reacting to the situation.

Crazy Cat Lady is amazingly fun. Like, the pull sucks, but the rest of it's just relaxing compared to fucking kologarn. Except when I DC at 4%. That's exciting for me.

Really though, I'm really loving Uld. Not because it's progression, but because it's actually worth thinking about the entire way through. Even the trash is a blast.

[SurfD]

We've been working on Council. It's  on the tank, but doable.

Council isn't actually that bad.  All you need is fast reaction from the tank to pull Steelbreaker out of the Rune of Power (but keep him close enough so mele / ranged can get in it and hit him with the damage buff), and lightning fast reaction on Overcharge Dispells.  If your dispeller is fast, you can often dispell it before it even manages to tick the first time.

We often have a Warlock with Felhunter as the overcharge dispeller, since Overcharge and Devour Magic are both on the same cooldown.  He just macros something to have the Felhunter Cast it on the tank and spams it when the Overcharge Cast is called.

Unless you are doing Hard Mode, then yeah, That would be one Nasty fight on your tank / healers.

[Fabricated]

My guild got Thorim down last week and we got Hodir to 30%. Hodir isn't terribly fun and supposedly Freya is worse, with Mimiron being double++ worse. Oy.

[SurfD]

10 man or 25 man?  I have done Hodir and Freya 10 man, and put in a few attempts on mimiron. 

Freya is all about trash management.  Once you have the trash figured out, the boss is pretty easy.  Now, doing it with keeprs up could be a lot more crazy.

Hodir is pretty crazy on 10 man.  I imagine 25 man would be insane, with people running everywhere, trying to stack buffs and fires and light beams while dodging ice.  Hodir pretty much defines the concept of "organized chaos" as a raid fight.

Mimiron, from my experience in 10 man, is all about execution, and not standing in shit.  Really, 90% of the stuff that kills you in mimiron kills you instantly and without remorse, but can also be largely avoided.  What really sucks on mimiron (in my expreience as a feral tank) is trying to dodge rocket strikes when you are standing in the middle of 5 different ground effects from DK's and paladins.  End result is usually OOPS, all the mele died cause no one could see the bloody impact circle.

[Fabricated]

10-man. Thorim was stupidly easy, 3 wipes which taught us important lessons (1. Melee in the arena - ranged in the gauntlet, 2. Kill the arena mobs faster, 3. Use a pet to pull the second mini-boss on the gauntlet) and we got him down the first time we managed to get him into the arena.

Hodir I think is a simple matter of our DPS and healers learning to not get bonked. Everyone's pretty good about not getting frozen now (ignoring our members who get frozen while standing dead center on a snowdrift for some reason), it's just the DPS getting good at output while dodging everything and breaking out the NPCs.

[Xeyi]

Everyone's pretty good about not getting frozen now (ignoring our members who get frozen while standing dead center on a snowdrift for some reason)

This seems to be a latency problem.  We tell our players to jump once when they get on the snow drift as to the best of my knowledge this updates their position with the server.  At least the problem stopped after we started doing this, it might be entirely coincidental 

We found mimiron considerably harder than the other keepers as well, phase 4 in particular.  There's just so much going on for melee to avoid in that phase it took some time to learn it.  Still we've only killed him once and I fear we'll have the same problems next time we're there.

On the plus side General Vezax felt like a walk in the park compared to Mimiron.

[bhodi]

If you're curious about aggregate statistics, check out:  http://www.worldoflogs.com/stats/ulduar/

Of course, this does not distinguish between people trying hard mode and people just doing regular. Still, it seems to think thorim is slightly harder. You can, however, see the gradual difficulty curve that blizzard has tried so hard to maintain.

We finished siege, antechamber, and Hodir in one go last night, so tonight hopefully we'll be able to finish off the keepers. Mirmiron and Thorim are crushing our balls currently.

Flame Leviathan
Wipes: 48.8%
Kills: 51.2%
4707 kills, 4494 wipes, 51.2 % success.
264237 DPS, 109 HPS, 401.0 seconds.
   
Razorscale
Kills: 39.0%
Wipes: 61.0%
5020 kills, 7858 wipes, 39.0 % success.
46344 DPS, 7208 HPS, 456.0 seconds.

XT-002 Deconstructor
Kills: 26.1%
Wipes: 73.9%
5330 kills, 15126 wipes, 26.1 % success.
72953 DPS, 11150 HPS, 369.5 seconds.
   
Ignis the Furnace Master
Kills: 28.8%
Wipes: 71.2%
4556 kills, 11287 wipes, 28.8 % success.
57429 DPS, 19508 HPS, 331.1 seconds.

The Antechamber of Ulduar

Assembly of Iron
Kills: 21.2%
Wipes: 78.8%
4403 kills, 16334 wipes, 21.2 % success.
56015 DPS, 13575 HPS, 528.7 seconds.
   
Kologarn
Kills: 25.1%
Wipes: 74.9%
4968 kills, 14808 wipes, 25.1 % success.
62382 DPS, 20534 HPS, 275.8 seconds.

Auriaya
Kills: 20.2%
Wipes: 79.8%
4476 kills, 17651 wipes, 20.2 % success.
57976 DPS, 13462 HPS, 401.6 seconds.
The Keepers of Ulduar

Mimiron
Kills: 10.3%
Wipes: 89.7%
2474 kills, 21649 wipes, 10.3 % success.
50475 DPS, 13288 HPS, 629.4 seconds.
   
Hodir
Kills: 20.8%
Wipes: 79.2%
3876 kills, 14715 wipes, 20.8 % success.
79396 DPS, 16828 HPS, 404.0 seconds.

Thorim
Kills: 9.2%
Wipes: 90.8%
3147 kills, 30981 wipes, 9.2 % success.
49156 DPS, 9664 HPS, 510.2 seconds.
   
Freya
Kills: 16.8%
Wipes: 83.2%
3359 kills, 16579 wipes, 16.8 % success.
47389 DPS, 11831 HPS, 455.7 seconds.

The Decent into Madness

General Vezax
Kills: 12.2%
Wipes: 87.8%
1968 kills, 14201 wipes, 12.2 % success.
67806 DPS, 5828 HPS, 496.4 seconds.
   
Yogg-Saron
Kills: 2.7%
Wipes: 97.3%
1006 kills, 36326 wipes, 2.7 % success.
74366 DPS, 8244 HPS, 803.2 seconds.

[K9]

Could you explain those numbers a little more please. How can you have less FL kills than Razorscale kills?

[proudft]

Some people don't bother logging Flame Leviathan, since it's primarily a vehicle fight.  Others forget to type /combatlog until they're past a boss or two. 

[K9]

Roger.

On another note, can anyone with experience with FL hard mode explain it to me? As I understand any +towers is harder, but you only get bonus loot for doing +2, and then +3 and +4 are just for acievements, or do you get more loot for those?

We're having zero problems killing him on 10s with 0 towers, although we don't bother killing his turrets (which makes the whole thing easier I think). If we were going to try +2, which towers should we leave, do we have to coordinate turret killing and are there any other strategy changes we should work on?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Leave the flame tower up. It's still incredibly easy and a way to get conquest badges in the 10man.

The 3rd and 4th towers are to get the glory/heroic glory achievements and really only for a proto drake.

Each tower increases his overall health and each has a special ability during the fight.

Thorim:drops lightning balls randomly

Mimiron:drops lines of fire you need to avoid.

Freya:spawns lots of plant adds you need to kill.

Hodir:ice beams focus in on players and then freeze the vehicle in place and needs to be broken out.

[Ingmar]

They nerfed Kologarn on 10 again, he's almost silly easy now (you can single tank him, leaving the other tank free to handle rubble).

I can't figure out why we can't deal with Razorscale, though. Everyone says that it is easier (even much easier) than Kologarn/XT/Auriaya but we killed all those in the first 4 or 5 attempts and have never really come close on Razorscale in several tries. It seems like it should be pretty straightforward.

[bhodi]

you might be missing the key of keeping one person directly below razorscale while he is in midair to draw the blue fire, immediately DPSing the big guys, waiting until there are no big guys left to bring razorscale down, and keeping dkp away from the big guy because of whirlwinds? Dunno.

[K9]

Leave the flame tower up. It's still incredibly easy and a way to get conquest badges in the 10man.

The 3rd and 4th towers are to get the glory/heroic glory achievements and really only for a proto drake.

Each tower increases his overall health and each has a special ability during the fight.

Thorim:drops lightning balls randomly

Mimiron:drops lines of fire you need to avoid.

Freya:spawns lots of plant adds you need to kill.

Hodir:ice beams focus in on players and then freeze the vehicle in place and needs to be broken out.

Thanks, do you get hard mode loot with just 1 tower up?

[Ingmar]

you might be missing the key of keeping one person directly below razorscale while he is in midair to draw the blue fire, immediately DPSing the big guys, waiting until there are no big guys left to bring razorscale down, and keeping dkp away from the big guy because of whirlwinds? Dunno.

I don't know if I can spare 1/10th of the raid to just follow the dragon around like that though? We haven't tried that though, at this point I'm willing to give anything a chance.

Generally we have two tanks pick up the adds, kill order is caster->whirlwind guy->normal ones, harpoons where there are only a couple adds up. I think we're just not getting enough damage on her when she's down, I am pretty sure once we get her grounded we will handle that part easily.

[Fabricated]

They nerfed Kologarn on 10 again, he's almost silly easy now (you can single tank him, leaving the other tank free to handle rubble).

I can't figure out why we can't deal with Razorscale, though. Everyone says that it is easier (even much easier) than Kologarn/XT/Auriaya but we killed all those in the first 4 or 5 attempts and have never really come close on Razorscale in several tries. It seems like it should be pretty straightforward.

My guild puts everyone on the southern half of the platform with a ranged DPS on activating the harpoon guns. One tank grabs the northern adds, another grabs the southern adds and the Sentinel if it shows up. If a Sentinel shows up, kill it ASAP. When the last harpoon needed to ground razorscale becomes available just immediately use it unless a new wave has JUST shown up. The instant you do this all DPS stops whatever they're doing and goes apeshit on Razorscale. We run a warrior tank (me) and then usually a pally or DK, so we usually have the OT take all of the adds while she's down so I can contribute my sunder armor on Razorscale.

[kildorn]

Our issue seems to be how many flight phases we get, and at least for me personally, healing on fumes by the third flight phase.

[Nevermore]

New innervate is 

[Lantyssa]

I wondered if you were going to approve of that change.  I only got to read the patch notes.  The auth  server wouldn't let me in. ><

[Fabricated]

Our issue seems to be how many flight phases we get, and at least for me personally, healing on fumes by the third flight phase.

Your DPS may need some work then. Razorscale should be grounded for good by the second or third landing easily.

[Selby]

Your DPS may need some work then. Razorscale should be grounded for good by the second or third landing easily.

Some attempts on our guild have her down by the 3rd attempt, and last night we couldn't get her down at all.  Of course, our healing missing the harpoon launcher being hit with flame 3 times in a row kind of brought things to a halt quickly...

[Sjofn]

I know at least one of the DPSers last night (I was sitting out last night) is incapable of reacting immediately to ANYTHING, so I'm sure that did not exactly help. Morphine slows reaction time, who knew!

[Paelos]

If Razor's not coming down by the 3rd landing, you're simply fucked. That can either be one of two things: 1) Your dps are dying too quickly from adds, which is almost assuredly their own fault from overaggro, or 2) Your dps suck and/or are undergeared for the fight.

If everybody is alive and you can't pull it off with 10 ppl and three landings, your dps are either terrible or in the wrong instance, and the rest of the fights will just crush you down the line. I think bare minimum is 2k while he's on the ground to do that. It's 3k to do it in 2 landings.

EDIT: As a tip for dealing with the fires, any kind of pets that can attack the boss when he's in the air and not harpooned once should be attacking him from the ground to draw fires. Once harpooned, have one person stay near the center to draw fires away from the melee. Hunters or locks work well at this job.

[Selby]

Our problems were just bad luck - we had some strange lag issues affecting 1 of our 2 healers and our other healer bit it in the first 2 minutes of the fight for some reason.  We're bringing new people through Ulduar, so we're still learning the fights, but we do pretty well so far.  We've already taken Razorscale down before, so it's just an issue of everything working and coming together.

[Paelos]

It's not an easy fight really. There's very little margin for error early on in terms of dps being alive, the random element of sentinels coming up at bad times, and he can rough up a tank who's not geared up from Naxx.

[K9]

Our issue seems to be how many flight phases we get, and at least for me personally, healing on fumes by the third flight phase.

As Paelos said, more than 3 flight phases and you almost certainly won't have the DPS to meet to soft enrage in phase 2.

There are a few likely issues on Razorscale:
1 - You get unlucky and get a disproportionate number of sentinels (nothing you can do about this except to DPS them down quicker)
2 - Your DPS aren't up to par and you are getting waves of adds either overlapping with each other or with the boss. (n.b. you should be firing the harpoons as soon as they are ready). If you do get overlap with the boss your DPS needs to know to switch to the boss immediately while your tanks offtank and hopefully you can catch up in the brief interval before the new waves spawn. If your DPS are getting waves of adds overlapping prior to harpoons then they probably need to go back to Naxx and improve their gear.
3 - Your DPS suck and die to fires/chain lightning. Get better DPS
4 - Your healers are healing sub-optimally and letting DPS die. Change your healer makeup, change your group comp or improve your healers.
5 - Your tanks suck and cannot control the adds. Get better tanks.

What sort of healer do you play? Priests have the worst mana issues of all the healers as holy, but are all right as Disc, and Disc is incredibly effective on Razor. If you are using a holy priest, consider seeing if they can dual-spec to Disc for this fight (and XT too, since a Disc priest can more-or-less solo heal tantrums). Shields cycled over everyone really takes the edge off the fire damage and allows your other healers to focus on the tanks.

Do you have a shaman? Heroism on the first landing makes a huge difference. We usually aim (with hero) for 75% HP after one landing. If you aren't getting add overlap you can use most of your healers to DPS (Priests and Shamans are great for this), and if you are a priest you can use heroism+shadowfiend to get back most of your mana.

Do you have replenishment? If you're ooming with replenishment then you're probably undergeared, or have a significant bias towards throughput stats.

Are your healers DPSing (even wanding, or whatever) during the ground phases?

Do you have paladins who can use FR aura? (this is more useful than conc or dev auras)

Are your tanks controlling and stacking the little adds so they can be AoE'd? While AoE isn't the solution to the adds, when used well it can be very helpful.

That's all I can think of right now. I do razor as Disc and find it an easy fight to handle.


Edit: When razor is grounded she cannot turn on anyone and so your tanks can DPS from anywhere on her. If you get a bad fire-patch placement (i.e. in front of her face when she's grounded) your tanks can DPS or build threat from the side of the boss, even for bringing her down to 50%.

[Sjofn]

Do you have a shaman? Heroism on the first landing makes a huge difference.

Tee hee hee hee hee hee! 

(Our shaman is the DPSer I refered to before.)

[Fordel]

Like I said last night, deepz harder!

[Paelos]

In 10 man, if i'm actually ranking things in terms of ease and general fun I'd go:

Flame Leviathan
XT
Kologarn
Razorscale
Ignis

[Phred]

(n.b. you should be firing the harpoons as soon as they are ready

Maybe you should clarify this because as written I strongly disagee. I usually waited until the 3rd harpoon was ready, then gave it another 5 sec before I ran for the first. You can trigger them on the run and get the first 3 down just as the dorfs finish the 4th. Way more efficient than running over when the first one spawns and standing oor of all the adds waiting for a harpoon to ripen.

It helps a bit if you are having dps problems to keep more dps in the fight longer.

[SurfD]

(n.b. you should be firing the harpoons as soon as they are ready

Maybe you should clarify this because as written I strongly disagee. I usually waited until the 3rd harpoon was ready, then gave it another 5 sec before I ran for the first. You can trigger them on the run and get the first 3 down just as the dorfs finish the 4th. Way more efficient than running over when the first one spawns and standing oor of all the adds waiting for a harpoon to ripen.

It helps a bit if you are having dps problems to keep more dps in the fight longer.

I believe the reason for this actually has to do with the Devouring Flames.

Current theory is that razor casts Devouring flames at whoever happens to be DIRECTLY closest to the boss at the time, NOT at random people in the raid.

Due to the fact that Razor flies erraticly around above the area, Who is closest generally changes often, giving the appearance of random targeting.

HOWEVER, each harpoon attached to Razor restricts her flight movement range.  Basicly, if you attach 2 harpoons or so to her, and have either a ranged class (in 10 man) or your Sentinel tank (in 25 man) stand inside the marked circle in the combat area, while everyone else stays outside the Circle border, there is something like a 90% chance that that person will end up being the "closest" person to the boss while she is in the air, and as such, will essentially be able to "tank" the Devouring flames, by keeping them in one area, and leaving the rest of your raid completely free to stand still and DPS adds to their hearts content without the need to flee from death-from-above every 10 seconds

[Ingmar]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Perhaps we will give that a go tonight.

[Paelos]

Yes, a person drawing flames down on top of themselves away from the group is the key. Simply put.