Ulduar Feedback Thread

From a healing point of the it didn't look like it. Although it's pretty hectic in phase 3, there's a lot of minimal damage healing period, then a burst when the beams and the adds come up.

I'm a bit confused about the range issues though, since my healings spells only have a 40yd range, but I could reach everyone (including the melee), except Taq on occasion, with my heals. But that was sorted by running in a little closer and throwing a quick instant heal on him. Or is that just because there was a concentration on adds?

What is Yogg's melee hit box like?

Also it'd be interesting to get some feedback from D and Zuzu about why their healing was so much higher than mine in phase 1, aside from the fact that they're a lot better than me at it :p

My only range issue was that I wanted to stand in the sanity well AND nuke the body, which I thought was what Telluria was doing. Instead I had to stand 10 yds in front of it so I could reach the body, but then turning sideways put me out of action for a few seconds. Something like:



The ranged won't reach Y-S, but can focus on controlling adds. They can face the fight always if standing in a well. The melee focus on the body, but can turn and dps adds if needed/being beamed. Healers stand in the middle of it all, facing out of the room, tanks flank the area and grab adds?

I realize that running back and forth alot reduces DPS, but as I noticed we had ages on the enrage timer, I really really really didn't want to risk the kill by not having enough DPS on the adds. Everytime I saw two adds or heard Cardinal on vent saying we needed more DPS on the adds, I turned to them.

However, this strategy may not always work. The portal team had perfect coordination in the illusions and we were lucky to get the two fast ones in a row (the dragon one and the shadow vault). As a result, we were able to cause enough brain damage to reach phase 3 in two visits. If the Stormwind illusion is any of the first two portal phases, it is unlikely that we will finish phase 2 with only two portal phases. As someone already noted, the Stormwind illusion is definitely the slowest of the three and at the moment, I don't think we have enough DPS to reach phase 3 in two portal phases if one of the illusions is the Stormwind one.

Would it be possible to tank the adds closer to Yogg-Saron? If so, the melee DPSers would be able to damage them when we're turned away from YS anyway. There's something about healing, but I haven't totally understood that part yet. Something about the adds healing YS if they're too close to him? Does anyone know if Wound Poison reduces this? It would definitely be easier for the melee DPSers if they could be tanked closer to YS, as it would reduce wasted running time. I apologize if someone already suggested something similar. I haven't read everything thoroughly yet, I just wanted to post some feedback. I'm looking at your drawing Marveen, but I can't quite decipher where the tanks will be positioning the adds. If possible, it would be neat if they could be tanked right where the word 'melee' is.

Empowering Shadows - Empowers friendly units within 20 yards of the target, causing them to regenerate 225,000 Health over 20 sec.

The spell does not heal Yogg Saron but the adds. 20 yards should be about the edge of the "broken" floor (the part where it's starting to become green goo). So we can move the add camp somewhat closer indeed.

As was mentioned we were lucky on the RNG with portals on our kill, if we had needed 3 portal phases it seems unlikely we would've made the enrage timer, so this is something we should tink about when it comes to phase 3. Perhaps our focus on getting adds down was a bit too high, they hit like trucks, but there's not that much for the healers to heal anyway. The main things is just to make the pickup.

Also, not sure if we've done it some other week, but last nights kill of IC counted towards champion, so 3 to go far as my achievment tells me. Spending some time getting a smooth pull on Auriaiaiaiaia next thurs would therefore be advisable

Well clearly if we stack enough Paladins they can shield themselves and others and nobody will die on the pull! It's genius.

What can I say? A great raid made even more special because we've cleared Ulduar in 23 raids.

Fatigue is a major issue in raiding and for all those who shed blood on Saturday, but weren't there on Monday, I salute you. We have an awesome raid group, that much is obvious.

Now inevitably we move onto hard modes in our quest for glory. Expect Thursday night to become the new wipe night.

I believe Flame Leviathan + tower, and XT are well within our grasp, so they will our first priority. When we can do them on hard mode, we will start really focusing on the Iron Council to unlock the Algalon quest chain.

I am aware that WMD struggled on Sarth + Drakes. I am hoping that Ulduar 10-man is better balanced and more achievable for us. I can't deny that we're much stronger now then we were then. We never cease to improve. However, my ultimate goal is just to ensure everybody has a good night raiding with us, so that will dictate how hard we press hard modes.

Regarding Akari's question, next week we will try tanking the adds closer to Yoghurt. I was being very cautious about adds on our maiden kill as they were the only thing there that could actually kill us. We had over a minute spare though at the end, which is a comfortable buffer if the portals lead to difficult places. Our add killing wasn't over the top.

Yogg is on farm now kkk

Can we try and get Malygos on farm too? :p

Epic raid, perfect co-ordination by all involved, great leading and communication on Yogg also Card, that did make a difference.

Anyone know a good place where I can read about the visions in depth? I've only managed to find bits of info, they just interest me as its the only part of the fight I don't see.

D

If you can't find more info - remind of tonight and I'll try to post something (@visions)

Cardinal wrote:I am aware that WMD struggled on Sarth + Drakes.

Still totally worth trying to do at some point in the future when decked out in Ulduar (or VioletArgent Tournament!) finery. There's a cool title at stake and a pretty mount which I'm sure you'd all love to pass on for me!

Derky wrote:Anyone know a good place where I can read about the visions in depth? I've only managed to find bits of info, they just interest me as its the only part of the fight I don't see.

You can see a bit of it towards the end of the first video at StratFu, and there's transcripts of the speeches at WoWWiki's tactics guide.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=42367.0

That's a post about the brain room and a video of it, though without the mobs.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=50617.0

This kill video contains POV from the brain phase.

Portals:

I didn't get around to doing the guide I was planning to... and I couldn't find a proper "portal guide" for Yogg... but I did find this:



The video is horrible, they are absolutely horrid at the portal phases... but you get a general idea of what's going on.

There are 3 random portal destinations. Each portal phase will randomly pick one destination (and all portals during that portal phase will lead to the same chamber), the 3 alternatives are:
Shadow Vault (the one the Knights of The Knights of the Ebon Blade use in Icecrown)
The Chamber of the Aspects (The room below the Wyrmrest Sanctum/Outside the Obsidian Sanctum(Sartharion))
The Stormwind throneroom.

All 3 are roughly the same size...however, there are quite a few differences:

(Note: all 3 portals will port the player to the "entrance/exit" of the chambers... so after killing all adds, you will need to return to where you "came from" to get to the brain)

When the portals pop up, Yogg also casts "Induce Madness", which has 60 seconds casttime.
Anyone inside the portals will loose 100% sanity if they are still inside the portals at that point.
Everyone should be clicking the portals at the 5 second warning.

Shadow Vault:
The fastest by far. There are 3 packs of three adds in the room. Left, right and "middle". Using Cleave/HeartStrike/etc, you can hit multiple targets with proper positioning.
(Lore: Shows the Lich King "interrogating" someone ("I WILL BREAK YOU, LIKE I BROKE HIM")

Chamber of Aspects:
Second fastest.
The dragons along the outer edge (full circle) are the targets.
DPS should split up left/right and meet after a halfcircle, run back through the middle of the room.
(Lore: Neltharion makes the Dragon soul)

Stormwind throneroom:
Smallest room, but the room is "star-shaped" (walls sectiong off the room), lots of candelabras and other crap to get stuck in.
The guards around the edge are the targets.
Also problematic because it's very hard not to get hit by lunatic gaze here.
(Lore: Garona assassinates the king)

The Lore Aspect of the portals is ... questionable. Doubtful that you'll ever have time to really take part of what is going on during a raid though.

You can probably control which direction you get thrown out of Yogg, by picking the portals properly, but seeing as the rooms turn us around, we've not done that yet... might be worth looking into if it'll make a major difference.

Hope that helps.

Cheers Taq. Difficult to watch but the general idea I get from it is:

Kill the adds
Face away from the skulls
DPS the brain
Leave before the brain lolcontrols you.

I'm guessing if done right you get a lot more time to DPS the brain than they did?

Exactly. You have 60 seconds to get in, kill all adds and get out.

I should also mention that the brain has 1.8m (might be 1.1m, i forget.) health that maps 1:1 health% to the body - ie: body and brain have different total hp, but they will always have the same health% (so, yes, the portal team can see the body's health when in portals).

When the brain reaches 30% it turns red (is normally bright blue), and can no longer be attacked.
The current Induce Madness cast will continue as normal, so get out ASAP.

I believe the adds have health in the 15-20k health and don't hit back - only damage is from the skulls spamming Lunatic Gaze and any debuffs from topside (and Seal of the Martyr/Hysteria :p).

How much damage does the gaze do and is it *always possible* to avoid it?

I noticed in the video, from the guy in the video's perspective there was a point at which he was being beamed from either side with the add in the middle?

I believe it's 2k (4?) health + 2% sanity per 1(3?) seconds.

It's weaker than the version that Yogg uses in P3, atleast.

Especially in Stormwind, it is difficult to avoid the gaze at all times.
Also, the skulls always spawn randomly, so there is on safe path. Half the time, I'm in the process of killing an add before the skulls have loaded, fully operating on the basis of having the debuff or not...

Ah, fair enough then. I've got the general idea but I guess I'll have to wait until I get to go in there to have a proper look.

What was our portal team doing killing-wise by the way? Taking one of three packs each?

Aye, I think Taq took the left, Ak the right and I went middle.

(We didn't really talk through it, we just took the same path each time, I think)

From a healing perspective - you can follow the brainteam from the outside via the minimap, you can see the brainteam moving relative to the outside raid (though they are in a phased reality they are still shown as being in the same room). If you are paying attention and not worrying about tentacles, you should be able to see where they will come out, by staying near them on the minimap (new class-coloured dots help).

Aye, next time I'm required to heal it I think I'll find it a little less hectic. Thanks for the tip .

I noticed the rogue in the video didn't have the disease cleansed, so he was getting stunned (especially noticeable in their second brain phase, Shadow Vault). So that's a high prio debuff for the Ret in the brain to watch out for.

Another fun, efficient raid. Good job on the hard modes. Iron Council hard mode is still our top priority, and something we'll focus on after Yogg, but there's no point ignoring doable hard modes on the way there. I want to do Iron Council last as we won't have Yogg Saron to worry about then.

I agree our Flame Leviathan “tactic” is still messy. However as long as we can still face-roll through it, there's no need to improve. Take Thorim for example, yesterday was the first time we actually realised what the lightning does. Whenever mistakes start causing wipes, people will start refining their performance. That might take 2 towers or 4, but I have faith in us to raise our game when the pressure is on. In the meantime, keep face rolling for all I care.

On XT we were just in time to break the heart. It was still close. I hope we can produce that kind of DPS every week. We have to break the heart first time or healer mana and the timer will become issues.

Other than that, a fine raid and I hope we can clear everything up to the Iron Council on Saturday!

Oh, and extra well done on beating Yogg before the nerf train hit him!

Cardinal wrote:
On XT we were just in time to break the heart. It was still close. I hope we can produce that kind of DPS every week. We have to break the heart first time or healer mana and the timer will become issues.

Aye the lower DPS, can one be put down to the fact that we had one less DPSer, and additionally I was lightbombed at the beginning of the heart phase so I spent a good 3 or 4 seconds getting back to actually attack the heart - additionally I didn't pop Heroism until late. But we still managed it. Ideally we want to be killing the heart without Heroism.

I'm not sure what the actual DPS numbers were like on the heart phase alone?

Dahlaine wrote:I'm not sure what the actual DPS numbers were like on the heart phase alone?

You can drag and click on the dps chart in World of Logs, and Set to Selection. The heart is up for 20 seconds, and died at 18:13:40, so just backtrack to 18:13:20 and set it to that. I got this:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/cHrpFgffB4rtZpYp/sum/damageDone/?s=1871&e=1893

Saturday 13th June

We finished it in 2 nights! Very cool raid murlocs - after the brickwall that Sarth-nD was for us it's good to see we've evolved and can do hardmodes in 10-man gear...

Mimiron - nearly got the perfect oneshot achievement, but I think we forgot to tell Telluria to just keep at range and let the melee do the hustle with the mechagnome.. boo! Felt as if they've nerfed the plasma blast, or we just got lucky with it - it was over sooner than ever on 2/3 tries?

Vezax - chaotic ending but still a record kill. We used only 4 vapours, and I never used more than one mana bar so next week we're trying with just 2 healers. I suggest it's D and Zuzu (assuming they can both come) as their heals are more appropriate to Vezax' big slow hits. Only thing that can use work here otherwise is people avoiding shadow crashes. I even think there's an achievement for it: [Shadowdodger]!

Yogg-Saron - Took what, 3 tries to get him down? We got unlucky on the first good try and Zuzu and I got brainlinked twice in a row, meaning half our healing was out of commission. The nerfs didn't feel too bad, they just removed a lot of the RNG from phase 1.

If you stand right on top of Sara (inside her body) you don't trigger the nearest cloud, so it is possible to keep that first cloud from chain-spawning adds. Healing through the explosion is not that much work unless you kill two adds in quick succession, so unless you can't do dps in melee range do stay there. I noticed we dragged the last add out of the head's spawn area at the end of P1 on our kill, which prevented a lot of the chaos we normally get at the start of P2 with people getting thrown out all over the room.

Also, I think the constrictor tentacles only grab people who're in melee range of them (or very close) - I managed to avoid getting grabbed on the kill by keeping distance to them. Was this just luck?

P3 is tense as a healer - you know the adds will oneshot you if they touch you, and the tanks take very spiky damage until the adds are softened (they do less damage the less health they have). But it felt like a very quick phase anyway. What was the deal with the sanity wells and dps, I vaguely remember something being said about that in Vent?

Iron Council - see Hard Mode thread!

Razorscale - see Hard Mode thread ([Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare] is part of the [Glory of the Ulduar Raider] metaachievement).

Ignis - Our first Ignis kill with 2 healers! I didn't think it was doable, looking at HPS numbers alone, but with D adding over 4k dps to the Coastrunners, Zuzu and I just managed to scrape by. It did help that he was hellbent on making tree gumbo out of me Very nice work!

Edits:
- WoL is back up. I can only see we killed 2 Saronite Vapours, but from the hits people took (40 altogether), it looks more like we downed 3.

Congratulations to all on an excellent week of raiding, and also for giving me a brown trouser moment on our Vezax kill!

Next week on WMD...

We try Flame Leviathan + Thorim and Mimiron's towers!

We repeat our XT, Thorim and Steelbreaker kills!

We spend time and wipes on Hodir hard mode and Freya + 1 Keeper.


Freya +1 should be pretty straightforward, I think we'll do it quickly. Each Keeper buffs her in a different way, and let her do one of their abilities (thorns, ground tremor or that photosynthesis thing).

Vezax is a low priority, as he doesn't stand between us and Agalon – but we'll certainly try him on hard mode if the first half of the raid is ahead of schedule.

Mimiron hard mode requires us to kill him under 8 minutes. Our fastest kill is 9 minutes something. Additionally he will gain +25% health and damage, and fire bombs will float around the room. In other words, his hard mode can wait a couple of weeks!