Ulduar

[bhodi]

The best person to do it is a hunter, since they can track the dragon and simply keep underneath at all times. We actually just have our tank who is on sentinel duty stand in the center to eat the flame.

[Sjofn]

Apparently having three tanks in our 10 man raids is the way we get shit done. 

Killed Razorscale and Council of Iron tonight. I even SENSED the try we would beat the Iron Council and got the But I'm on Your Side achievement. 

[Fabricated]

Iron Council is pretty easily 2-tanked if you want the fight to go faster. One on Steelbreaker and one on the other two. If you got a warrior tank make sure he's on rune-guy and the caster since between revenge stuns, shockwave, conc blow, shield bash, heroic throw, etc they can generally keep him locked down until you get to him. This is particularly important after Steelbreaker goes down since that lightning whirl hurts.

Biggest pile of fucking horseshit in history: Having Rune-guy toss a power rune on the caster the instant he dies, while all the warrior's interrupts are on cooldown, the rest of the raid is too far away to help, and the caster follows with an immediate lighting whirl that kills half the raid.

[Sjofn]

We tried the two tank once (I was actually supposed to be there as dps) and then went "screw it, three tanks AWAAAAAY!" The runecaster guy hits kinda hard. :(

The other times I'm not REALLY a third tank, just sort of.

[kildorn]

Iron Council was fun.

Razorscale was totally us just picking up our game a bit and doing it right this time. <3 Also, having sjofn bait fires.

[Sjofn]

I had to yell at people to git outta my circle a few times. I am very territorial.

[Ingmar]

The breath doesn't hit that hard on 10, so if there were adds up I just dragged them all in front of her and it was fine. That seemed to help a lot too. That said we *barely* got her to 50% in 3 tries on our best attempt, so I think dps is definitely the limiting factor.

Iron Council is totally fun! To tank anyway.

[Sjofn]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Ignis. Fuck him! And fuck my OT job on that fucking fight! Argh!

(We killed him tonight but FUCK THAT FIGHT.)

[Fordel]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Ignis. Fuck him! And fuck my OT job on that fucking fight! Argh!

(We killed him tonight but FUCK THAT FIGHT.)

It was fine, yea baby! 


Have fun doing that one without me though. 

[Fabricated]

Ingis is a snap on 10-man and irritating on 25 since it takes 2 off tanks to really take care of the adds.

[Fordel]

It was our first night of trying Ignis, so it took a few attempts to work out all the kinks. My personal favorite is when I blew myself up with a shatter.


"Oh hey guys, just an FYI, don't stand beside those  "

[Ingmar]

I see things like "Ignis is a snap on 10-man" all the time, and I don't really get it - I thnk he's probably the hardest boss of the ones we've done (the first 7, haven't done any watchers yet.)

Are you doing it in Naxx 25+ gear?

[Fordel]

We just need to deepz harder, so the fight doesn't take 12 minutes or whatever. That's like our issue on every boss, ever.

[bhodi]

If you're up to snitching, there are two mods that are a HUGE advantage to your general raid.

The first is called "RaidBuffStatus".

It's a small dashboard that has icons for all of the different buffs that people should have - everything from your standard stuff like AI and Fort, well fed, flasks, checking to make sure no pallies have crusader aura, to personal buffs like mage armor, inner fire, weapons buffs for rogues on your entire raid. It also hooks in with pally power and can point fingers at who is supposed to be keeping the buffs up. If you don't want to track something (like shadow protection) you can just click the icon and it becomes an X and is ignored.

It can send reports as whispers to the responsible people by ctrl-clicking the icon, or shift-clicking to report to raid, or hitting the raid button delivers a full report of what's missing. It's terrific and ALWAYS catches someone. I whisper to tell people to eat the fish feast several times a night. It's little stuff but it all adds up. It's also good for catching rebuffs on the one guy who died.

The second is called "Utopia".

This has a icon for each type of buff and debuff that can be put on the raid or boss. I use it for both group composition ("We're missing +10% AP. In our raid, so we need to bring either that Enh shaman or a blood DK") and during combat I glance at it ("Warriors are not sundering armor, and we're missing faerie fire on the mob"). Again, little stuff but it all adds up.


I personally think someone with the first addon is critical, the second is just helpful.

[kildorn]

I don't think we're ever missing buffs (maybe potions if we've been wiping on shit all night), we don't raid stack though.

Ignis is just a bitch because it's essentially two fights and a LOT OF GIANT GRAPHICS IN THE WAY

[Sjofn]

Yeah seriously, I can't see a fucking thing in that fight.

[bhodi]

I don't think we're ever missing buffs (maybe potions if we've been wiping on shit all night), we don't raid stack though.

Install it and see; you'll be quite surprised. Trust me on this.

[Fabricated]

I see things like "Ignis is a snap on 10-man" all the time, and I don't really get it - I thnk he's probably the hardest boss of the ones we've done (the first 7, haven't done any watchers yet.)

Are you doing it in Naxx 25+ gear?

With a good off-tank taking care of the adds and healers/casters that pay attention to the flame jets so as to not stupidly get silenced, it's really easy. The adds are the only real x-factor in the entire fight. I was 3/4ths in Naxx10 gear when I went into Ulduar as a tank, and we brought healer alts -entirely- in Naxx10 gear too. We did have a couple DPS completely bedecked in 25-man gear though.

[Ingmar]

I don't think we're ever missing buffs (maybe potions if we've been wiping on shit all night), we don't raid stack though.

Install it and see; you'll be quite surprised. Trust me on this.

Yeah I already scan through people by hand and I see stuff like missing food buffs all the time. We didn't have shadow protection up for the Auriaya kill this week, too, which I didn't notice until near the end of the fight. Definitely going to look into this.

[Sjofn]

Aside from being able to see fuck all the entire time, the adds were acting totally stupid threat-wise. I never usually have threat problems, but it was hard as hell to keep the attention of the adds. It wasn't SO bad once they turned molten, because I knew they'd wipe their aggro (or at least seemed to wipe their aggro) once they were done thinking about how they're red golems now instead of grey, so I could taunt or DG them over to a water pool, but it seemed like they would tear off at random while I was trying to lead them into a fire patch. 

[Merusk]

Fish Feasts have made people lazy about food buffs.  Swapping from 2h flasks to 1h has made a lot forget to reflask. Particularly if you're in a guild like mine that ran MAYBE 2.25 hours a night, so you just weren't used to doing it before.

Yeah, the adds wipe their aggro when molten. I've heard of the same complaint about random aggro from our tanks on that fight.

[Fabricated]

Aside from being able to see fuck all the entire time, the adds were acting totally stupid threat-wise. I never usually have threat problems, but it was hard as hell to keep the attention of the adds. It wasn't SO bad once they turned molten, because I knew they'd wipe their aggro (or at least seemed to wipe their aggro) once they were done thinking about how they're red golems now instead of grey, so I could taunt or DG them over to a water pool, but it seemed like they would tear off at random while I was trying to lead them into a fire patch. 

After the adds go molten, after they first leave the scorch, if they touch another scorch again, they dump aggro. Learned this painfully in the 25-man version.

[Ingmar]

Its actually the pre-molten phase where they were acting strangely for us, but I was on the boss himself so I'm not really 100% sure what was going on.

[K9]

Zerging doesn't quite work anymore since they buffed his...well, buff he gets from activating golems.

I slaved over photoshop for a good..4-5 minutes making this shitty image, so you better use it.



Yellow=Ingis
Red=Where the scorch should go.

Pull first according to the arrow, after the first scorch take him south so he places the next scorch there, then go west to the next one, then north, then back to where you started. Your addtank will pick up the golems and stand in the scorch, remembering to retaunt after they go molten and run them into the water which should be right next to them.

Make sure you have a ranged DPS who can do 5k in a single hit (we used a boomkin), blow up the add, heal the OT, pick up the next one.

DPS/healers can stand whereever IMO, but we had everyone stand in the middle so group-heals could go off and the melee can constantly be on Ingis without much running around.

We just tried this for the first time properly and it worked like a charm, thanks a lot.

Which keeper should we start with on normal? I'm thinking Thorim, and definitely not Mimiron, but I'm open to suggestions; thanks.

[Ingmar]

We ended up doing it differently - just putting the scorches in a half circle around the boss, who we kept stationary. There was a whole side that never saw a scorch that way, which helped to keep the ranged from having to move, etc. The scorches disappear fast enough that you only need 3 spots to drop them, at least on 10.

[Soulflame]

Hodir is probably the easiest keeper to start on.  Although it looks madly chaotic, it's not really that bad of a fight.
Priority is always to break NPCs and players out of iceblocks.
Don't stand in falling snow.
Do stand in circles of light.
Keep moving.
Get onto the snow drifts.
Win the DPS race.

Thorim, on the other hand...

The first part of the fight is balancing arena vs tunnel groups.  This is also the hardest part.
Next, you have to get people to not stand in lightning.
Then, you have to have your tanks swapping out correctly.
Hopefully your healers are paying attention.  Or maybe your tanks will actually call out when they are taunting.
Finally, you have to win a DPS race, as Thorim buffs himself with a nature damage multiplier that will eventually overwhelm healing.

[kildorn]

Our tanks call switches. Plus, aggro indicators on heal frames are <3

Really, our tanks are pretty bulletproof. We're well beyond the days of hoping the tank doesn't up and die. We're totally an endurance guild. <3

[Fabricated]

Thorim on 10man at least is way easier than Hodir when you get your group makeup right for the arena and hallway.

Also, the pug Uld25 I usually run in is up to Auriya now and holy shit is that fight annoying on 25-man. It's a breeze on 10-man, but on 25 that fucking guardian refuses to not spend 99% of its time pouncing so I keep missing my taunts.

[Musashi]

After last night's Mimiron nerf, I think Thorim is now the hardest keeper.  It's prolly a toss up between Fyrea and Mimi, with Hodir definitely the most accessible.

[Khaldun]

10-man Ignis seems hard to me. 10-man Razorscale is insanely easy for our folks and has been pretty much since the patch went live, we went in two weeks in and instantly ripped up Razorscale and Deconstructor. Ignis continues to be a real puzzle for us. I think maybe it's a DPS problem, since I think we have the pacing and mechanics right.

[kildorn]

Ignis is very much (from what I can tell at least) a game of two fights and completely ifnoring the part you're not involved in. Offtank/druid play with adds. Everyone else ignores everything but staying out of flame patches and DPS's the boss. Then it's just healer stress and tank stress.

At least for me healing it, it didn't click until I mentally separated the fights and stopped trying to keep track of the offtank/druid game and concentrated on who needed what healing and where the fuck was ignis facing.

[Merusk]

As my guild slowly dies the death of, "Hey guess we should have recruited instead of being a closed circle of folks" I went on a preliminary run with a higher-end guild I apped. (oddly, they raid fewer days and hours than my 'casual' guild did. 4 days a week, 3 hours max.)   Because of this I got to see fights I'd never have seen in the old guild, since we were struggling to do Ignis and Hodir. 

Mimirion is a damn fun fight, chaotic as it is, but I can not see casual guilds that downed Naxx doing it without some more nerfs. (And even then, prepare for half your raid to die to Frogger 2.0, revenge of the bomblings.)  That's a shame, really, because the train and the modeling of the later parts of the instance are great.  The area leading up to the General was the most atmosphere I've seen in a place since Kara, which really jazzed me.   

Hopefully I'll get dragged along for the Yogg fight this Sunday, too.  Then, even if I don't get into the guild I'll have at least seen all the bosses, and partaken in the fights, which is all I'm really after.

[SurfD]

10-man Ignis seems hard to me. 10-man Razorscale is insanely easy for our folks and has been pretty much since the patch went live, we went in two weeks in and instantly ripped up Razorscale and Deconstructor. Ignis continues to be a real puzzle for us. I think maybe it's a DPS problem, since I think we have the pacing and mechanics right.

As far as i know, ignis does not have any kind of Hard Enrage timer.  So the only problem with ignis in 10 man would be just not having the offtank who is on Add duty getting the adds to the molten state and then getting them to water fast enough for someone to shatter them.   Unless he starts activating them a lot faster as time goes on, you should never really have more then 1 up at once.

[bhodi]

I've come to the conclusion that even fairly skilled people in wow lack the most basic amount of situational awareness. I don't know if it's the fact that they personally suck, the quality of the player base has gone down, that the UI is in the way, or that health/mana/useful information is not integrated into the world properly, but we just spent 4 hours wiping on yogg phase 1 because people can't stay out of the god damned clouds. It's frustrating as all hell.

[lesion]

Dang, that's excessive.  I don't think I'd stick around for 4 hours on a single boss these days, did that too much when I was in a "real" raiding guild.

My stacked guild PUG (25 man, 2 nights a week) just got Freya and Thorim down for the first time and it was pretty awesome.  Freya's 3 add spawn caused a bit of trouble because our DPSers are overzealous, but it wasn't terrible. On Thorim our tanks died at around 500k and we managed to burn him down before everyone died. Intense and fun!  Casual is the way to go methinks.