Ulduar Feedback Thread

Taminak wrote:My damage also seemed a bit low, if it was due to the 12 attempts of FL or just not back into the swing of raiding yet, but that shall vastly improved

I think your damage was quite good considering - our deadliest Coastrunners just do THAT good damage, it can make everyone look bad..

And feral dps needs a nerf.. -.-

Monday 29th June

General Vezax: Had two first tries with Gimil in some special spec. Vezax disagreed with it, and made sure to chaincrash Gimi, so his healing was non-existent. After that we decided to try with just two healers (D went ret as that's less mana dependent than moonkin here?), and managed to kill him just under 6 minutes, using only one Saronite Vapour (it was downed 3m 30s into the fight).

I found it easier to conserve mana with 2 healers - the tank takes big but very predictable hits and there's less crosshealing. I was stretched for mana at the end, but still had a few heals left. Zuzu got 7800 mana back from the single puddle we downed - if we can save that much mana, we don't need the puddle (and I think D can heal for at least as much as I did for less mana!) In essence, we need to find a way to end the fight before the healers need to use those extra 8k mana. Damage breakdown for 902k raidwide damage:

- Gimi tanked 597k
- Rets selfharmed 196k (not real damage as JoL outheals that)
- 13 Marks of the Faceless (3 of them ticked 15 times, 72k damage done and healed Vezax for 291k) <- AVOIDABLE
- 29 Shadow Crashes (4 connected, 34k damage) <- AVOIDABLE

DPS seemed a bit low on this try, but we had two offspecs and melee interrupting AoEs, so I'm sure we can do better than this! We want Vezax as close to death as possible before the Animus spawns to avoid gankage in P2. Vezax has 8.3M health points, here's the dps we need:

- kill at 4'30'' = 31k dps
- kill at 5'00'' = 28k dps
- kill at 5'30'' = 25k dps
- kill at 6'00'' = 23k dps (we had this last night!)

For the hardmode try, we need to kill the Animus before Vezax dies - he turns Vezax immune while alive! The Animus spawns around 4 minutes into the fight if no vapours are killed, and has 12M 2M hp (thanks Tell!). According to WoWhead comments, it seems this fight is NOT a dps race, we WILL need the power of 3 healers to survive the Animus. Key is to have all 3 healers at over 70% mana when the Animus spawns. So, save mana for 4 minutes -> Animus spawns -> THEN it's a dps race to kill Animus before healers go dry.


Yogg-Saron: Pretty smooth kill - only had one death and it was due to not running out with Sara's Fervor/Favour up. Megafast P2, very few crushers spawning, easy loot! Definitely doable with just one ranged dps!


Razorscale: We got another 7/25 dwarfs for the [Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare] achievement, otherwise nothing to see here.


Ignis: Healers borked up the first try and lost the tanks at the end of the fight, but things went a lot more smoothly on the second try and we got a speedkill.

Marveen wrote:The Animus spawns around 4 minutes into the fight if no vapours are killed, and has 12M hp.

Surely that has to be the 25-man version - Vezax himself only has 8.something million HP! Mm - looking at WoWhead there's a note of "Health: 1,994,135 - 12,550,500" - so I'd imagine we're looking at 2M HP not 12 Still quite a lot of extra HP to burn down..

Marveen wrote:Yogg-Saron: Pretty smooth kill - only had one death and it was due to not running out with Sara's Fervor/Favour up. Megafast P2, very few crushers spawning, easy loot! Definitely doable with just one ranged dps!

And I was expecting it to be an utter nightmare too - I'd always sort of assumed it spawned a big tentacle with a couple of small ones each time, I wonder if it's been stealth nerfed?

Very tidy feeling raid overall, even with the occasional comedy booboo here and there.

Good raid last night! We've never managed so many hard modes in 1 night.

I am guilty for a couple of wipes. I'll blame the awful hangover I had!

Next time I want to try an experiment and solo tank Thorim on phase 3, and get all healers to spam the crap out on me so I can tank through the unbalancing strikes. Last night Marv managed to solo heal me through a full unbalancing strike when Thorim had 9 stacks, it is possible.

The risk is that I'll get critted for 32k (out of my 39k health, which happened just once last night), but if we get lucky, and with 3 healers on one, maybe we'll make it. If I die near the end, Gimi can grab him and take it the final way.

Tank deaths are a number 1 source of wipes on Thorim and maybe if the healers just focus on 1 person, all together, they can do enough to keep me alive.

Of course this could be a complete abortion of an idea but I'm eager to try it.

Cardinal wrote:Next time I want to try an experiment and solo tank Thorim on phase 3, and get all healers to spam the crap out on me so I can tank through the unbalancing strikes.

Isn't that very RNG-risky, in as much as the Unbalancing Strikes ("Inflicts 200% weapon damage on the main target and reduces its defense skill by 200 for 15 seconds.") make you splatterable?

Comment on WoWhead from two days ago:

Now there's one thing about the unbalancing strikes that people fail to mention, it is correct that it reduces your defense skill by 200. It was asked if this made the tank vulnerable to crushing blows, and was stated it does not. This is indeed incorrect!

The level threshold for crushing blows is 4 levels, but this is calculated by asumin a level 83 mob has a weapon skill of 415 (83*5) and a level 80 player has 400 (a tank at least 540) defense. A difference in attackers weapon skill and defenders defense skill of 20 is required in order to calculate crushing blows into the combat rolls.

Now consider the tank having his defense lowered by 200, leaving Thorim with 415 weapon skill and the tank with 340 (assuming he is not over-def'ing his crit immunity (some are, some don't)) This is a difference of 75.. 75 > 20 and thus you will be subject to crushing blows while under the effect of unbalancing strikes.

I as a protection Paladin recorded a crushing blow upon myself during an attempt last week, though did not get a screenshot of this happening, but I can assure you that while under the effect of Unbalancing Strikes, Crushing Blows is a factor to be dealt with.

Saturday 4th July

Finished Ulduar in 2 nights for the second time ever! Smooth raid, loads of bosses downed - now if only we can have Li deal with the old age people hiding in his bathroom... Vent was a bit quieter than usual, and it was strange not getting a vocal confirmation on each "PULLING" macro: "oh yeah... GIMI HAS PULLED!! *scramble healers*"

Freya: Killed her in three pulls (four, if you count the first one). We did her with one Elder up - we left the top right one alive, and got extra damage by all mobs/abilities plus the random target Iron Roots. One thing I noticed for the first time is that the seed bombs in P2 will land on players - so if healers spread out, the risk of getting oneshot by having more than one seed explode on you IF you get rooted is minimised.

Mimiron: I was boomkin here. For some reason, the head in P3 didn't like me and insisted on targeting me, even when I stopped nuking for several seconds and even placed myself behind Kayte. Don't ask me what that was about.. Not the best execution, but the encounter has been nerfed a bit so it's more forgiving.

General Vezax: Once we did some shuffling of raid functions, he went down fast. Bit of an annoying boss as the corpse run is so long! I made a point out of calling loads of vapour kills (think we did 5 in all), not only to give Dahl some practice (), but I wanted to make sure healers had plenty of mana at the end of those 8 minutes or however long that fight lasts. That and it was fun to watch Dahl dodge shadow crashes..

About those crashes - I think you three (Kayte, Zuzu and Dahl) got a lot of them sent your way because you were bunched up. If you stand in a ring around Vezax, Marked people can run away from Vezax (out of the ring), and crashed people can run in or strafe away from it. I got very few (and had plenty of strafing room) on the other side of Gimi. I did get targeted for a lot of Marks however, but they do no damage unless there's people around to leech from.

Yogg-Saron: Quick learning by all. Once we got the knack of surviving P1, and people knew what to kill in P2, it was a smooth kill. Raid was a bit too spread out at times, but this got progressively better.

Razorscale: We got another 2 dwarves towards [Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare], but you killed her too fast! She only had one ground phase, and we ended up with Gimi having an entourage of angry Dark Iron Guardians bashing him in.

Ignis: WoL didn't record this as a kill, I think it's because we nearly had a wipe at the end! It was lack of healing that got Gimi down the first time, Taq bought us time to bring him back up (heroic sacrifice! :LOL:) and the last 50 seconds Ignis decided to play whack-a-mole with us.


Thanks to Bal for master looting, to Zuzu for the healing assignments, to the Coastrunners killing stuff and not standing in the fire, and to the tanks for your masochism and thick skulls. Was fun to try raidleading for once, but it did make me appreciate what Card does every week so much more!

Regarding Vezax, Marv's right - D, Z and I were a bit too bunched up (I ran into a lot of crashes. Running away from mine was executed flawlessly ). My personal mana pool management was a lot better too; i.e only dps lobsterface when in black goo, use the wand otherwise, no unnecessary blinking.

In Vezax sometimes a player gets targeted when he already stands in vapours - and so himself or/and another player that comes for jacuzi gets a hit too. Also I got 1-2 hits targeted while casting a non-instant spell. it is better to be hit and bandaged instead of losing my spell/mana on the tank. I think we have Vezax on easy with 3 healers now - with 2 we have the "what if 2 healers get hit/leeched on same time" problem
It was a nice night, I grew a bit overconfident in the end and lost Gimi but.. Marveen saved our dignity. Gratz!

Aye. I wasn't sure about my positioning on Vezax so sorry about that!.

Watching a shadow crash come in seeing it hit people where you were just standing makes you feel awful .

Additionally my mana regen was pretty off (forgot my bandages!) but I guess this'll come with practice. It seems that Earth Shield did the highest percentage of my healing here anyway and it seemed to work well as a back-up for the other two healers. I only ended up throwing out a few LHW's.

Thursday 10th July

New achievements: [Dwarfageddon] (Flame Leviathan trash) and [Nine Lives] (Auriaya). We also got a Leatherworking pattern from FL+2, can't remember which but it's there. Also, we now have 5 people on the Algalon quest line - Cardinal, Balgarim, Taqwa, Derky and Dahlaine.

Flame Leviathan: Holy firepower! Fastest kill we've done, this tactic definitely works for us:

- Siege Engine 1: driver (interrupt) + cannonneer (downing pyrite)
- Siege Engine 2: driver (interrupt) + cannonneer (downing pyrite)
- Demolisher 1: driver (stack pyrite) + passenger (ONLY loading pyrite)
- Demolisher 2: driver (stack pyrite/launch passenger) + passenger (caster dps, launch onto turrets or load pyrite) + catapult passenger*
- Bike: driver + Demo2 passenger*

The trick seems to be to have 2 casters taking turns to be launched from the second Demolisher, so there's always a passenger on FL taking down turrets (max. Overload time), and there's always one Demolisher dedicated to pyrite stacking. When not on FL, that caster is standing by in the bike's passenger seat. Only thing that needs work is Demo2 drivers' aiming skills.. :p

XT-002 and Kologarn - standard kills. Ranged positioning on XT-002 still needs work - you don't need to run 50 yds away when you have either bomb - 3 tiles is all you need to move! Taminak went afk ("for tea!") and got replaced with Li after XT.

Auriaya: We did a megaslow kill while waiting for 9 Feral Defenders to spawn before killing Auriaya. Nine void zones later, she went down with less than a minute left on the enrage timer. Yawn achievement, the only hard bit is trying to line up the voidzones so the raid doesn't get feared into it (or into the gatekeepers to Mimiron/Hodir). Now to work on [Crazy Cat Lady], which counts for the meta.

Iron Council: DPS was a bit slow on the second try, interrupts on Brundir in P2 weren't entirely there (or Steelbreaker was moody?), Brundir was allowed to nuke from the power rune (with two DKs in the raid) and people weren't paying attention to the Overload (get DBM, enable the warning, l2move). Messy but we got it in the end. Question: did we have a nature res totem up on this fight?

Hodir and Thorim: We got Taminak back in the raid after Li d/c'ed. Didn't have the dps for either hardmode, so did them both on normal. On Hodir, l2buff the melee if you have the spark. And cleanse. Btw, I think Taminak did well on this fight considering he hadn't seen it before..

Lastly, about the extended AFKs - they are NOT cool (which you already know ). Raids are planned a week in advance, it's not hard to organise your RL around them - you wouldn't run out of a soccer/polo/choir/whatever practice to have dinner, don't do it to your fellow raiders. I'd also love to hear from Li - what happened last night?

/crankydruidout

Don't forgot Bal in your little Algalol list =(

Fixed! I thought we only had 3 quests..

/Forgotten.

FL: The problem was not the aim or the distance - I launched you too soon - FL had apparently not recovered from the overload... doh.

Council: can't deathgrip stunned targets, they are not moved and DG gets put on CD - Happened quite a few times yesterday.

Hodir: We did have the DPS actually.
D, with his fairly poor DPS-gear and rusty ret skills was consistent 3rd, and still we finished 6 seconds late.

Lastly, about the extended AFKs - they are NOT cool (which you already know ). Raids are planned a week in advance, it's not hard to organise your RL around them - you wouldn't run out of a soccer/polo/choir/whatever practice to have dinner, don't do it to your fellow raiders.

On this note I would like to present my case, just so people dont go all cranky on me.
On the tuesday (the week previous) I left my computer once more for a week, whilst builders came and did the bathroom AND my other lovely (*cough*) members of my family left me and went to Cyprus for the week. I have stayed in three houses in the last week, with limited internet aviablity.
On the thursday I returned and as we had been away we had no food in the house, my relatives brought it over and left it for us for our tea. (Dinner for those Non-Brits) I was hoping that we would eat before we raided, but alas my Step-father made the meal during and one thing lead to another (Tea then Cheesecake!) and 20minutes later I was leaving the Instance.
So I had been unable to plan anything for before the raid.

On that note:
Flame
What a great kill, buckets of Hp seemed to be falling off him all the time.

XT
I believe I was the cause of the mourning. Several times I had Light Bomb on me back to back, so as I moved in and killed the Spark I had to run a bit further. Likewise with Gravity Bomb, thus resulting in my death.


Hodir
Well, I had never done that fight before and believed I preformed the best I could during it. I had no idea about the Shammy Buff and that I had to run through to the melee, but you can't blame me for that.
5-6 seconds away from the extra Cache! Argh!

Thorim
Well.. hmm... we cleared it, but what the heck was hitting me all the time? Other then that I justed aimed at him.. pressed buttons and hoped for the best.

Mnemo wrote:/Forgotten.

FL: The problem was not the aim or the distance - I launched you too soon - FL had apparently not recovered from the overload... doh.

Council: can't deathgrip stunned targets, they are not moved and DG gets put on CD - Happened quite a few times yesterday.

Hodir: We did have the DPS actually.
D, with his fairly poor DPS-gear and rusty ret skills was consistent 3rd, and still we finished 6 seconds late.

Does that mean we've done it 5 times? Blimey, didn't think so.

Anyway, if D is third on the damage meter with offspec and offgear then clearly we don't have the dps we need by my definition of "enough dps"... :p Latent dps is no use if it can't be produced!

@Taminak - about Thorim: he will regularly feed on charges from the pillars around the room. You see a small stream of lightning from the pillars to Hodir, and after a few seconds he discharges them all and zaps a cone back at that pillar. If you are standing in that spot you get zapped too! This is a oneshot on hard mode, btw, so you need to move away from the lightning stream as soon as you see it near you.

Edited: @Taqwa - about FL: Ah, so that's what happened! I flew through the air, seemed to land on him but slid through and landed on the floor. Good to know.. *regurgitates healing list*

Re: nature totem - there was one up at all times, yes, apart from when I was moving the totems towards the big boss at IC.

I'm feeling pretty down about my DPS at the moment, so I apologise that it is still low. The couple of times I had the Lightbeam and that crit thing on me at Hodir I was getting some really good DPS out of it. Still looking for ways to get my DPS up. If anyone has any clue, please, I really need the help.

Marveen wrote:New achievements: [Dwarfageddon]

I hear you people almost all the time in Ventrilo, but.. pls make sure we all know what we are going to do. I was killing these poor dwarves not aware that I was supposed not to do so, until a nice paladin WROTE IT DOWN (even then i sneakily killed another pair). Pls say "Shut down Zuz, we try for this or that"! and I am always at your command (else, with a cannon, an AA gun and hundreds of little people running to me.. I see red)

Sorry for the wipes at Hodir, mainly my faults, my deaths because of my new tactics but sometimes trying for the best gives no results. On our succesful attempt I used the "marital sex" way (no experimentation, no new positions, just proved and polished efforts) and everything went fine with even 8 dispells - yes Cardinal, I know priests can dispel.. . (I think Cardinal and marveen reached almost their patience limits with me)

I was not so happy yesterday so I didnt mention Cardinal's gift to the raid. He had so little faith on my dancing abilities in Heigan that he put an enormous bid on me dying there. As we all saw, we missed the achievement because of TANKING mistakes, so I invested the money he so valiantly gave me and we have a new trading card game loot card for our next raid - not as main attraction but as a gift after we finish the night. It wont be anything extra rare, but.. it will be OK. I keep an extra ethereal plunderer for Algalon (he is very rare...)

Well, as long as we use ranged to buff melee on Hodir, ranged won't be ale to keep up on that fight, but I do agree that you could probably do more DPS overall - however, I don't know much about elemental shaman other than that you suffer from moving.
Nor do I know much about your gear level - you might catch up eventually?

Atleast you weren't beaten by a ~T6 warlock in VoA!

# Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).
# Wind Shock: Has been renamed Wind Shear and no longer shares a cooldown with Flame, Frost or Earth Shock.
# Maelstrom Weapon: Now also has a chance to reduce the cast time of Hex


This should make all interrupting one hell of a lot easier .

zuzuna wrote:Sorry for the wipes at Hodir, mainly my faults, my deaths because of my new tactics but sometimes trying for the best gives no results. On our succesful attempt I used the "marital sex" way (no experimentation, no new positions, just proved and polished efforts) and everything went fine with even 8 dispells - yes Cardinal, I know priests can dispel.. . (I think Cardinal and marveen reached almost their patience limits with me)

Cardinal literally ROFLed at the highlighted comment .. About the healing and cleansing, I've sent you another TLDR private message!

zuzuna wrote:I was not so happy yesterday so I didnt mention Cardinal's gift to the raid. He had so little faith on my dancing abilities in Heigan that he put an enormous bid on me dying there. As we all saw, we missed the achievement because of TANKING mistakes, so I invested the money he so valiantly gave me and we have a new trading card game loot card for our next raid - not as main attraction but as a gift after we finish the night. It wont be anything extra rare, but.. it will be OK. I keep an extra ethereal plunderer for Algalon (he is very rare...)

Sounds fun! Wonder what it is..

Dahlaine wrote:# Earth Shock: Redesigned. This spell no longer interrupts spell casting, but rather reduces melee attack speed by 10% for 8 seconds (exclusive with similar effects such as Thunder Clap).
# Wind Shock: Has been renamed Wind Shear and no longer shares a cooldown with Flame, Frost or Earth Shock.
# Maelstrom Weapon: Now also has a chance to reduce the cast time of Hex


This should make all interrupting one hell of a lot easier .

So Wind Shear becomes your only interrupt?

Note the part where it doesn't share cooldown with the other shocks anymore - means Shaman can interrupt on demand without messing with their DPS rotation.

Aye, what Taq said, assuming it doesn't have an increased cooldown, this now means I can interrupt every six seconds. Of course this is a 3.2 change so we'll have to wait.

Skathi wrote:Re: nature totem - there was one up at all times, yes, apart from when I was moving the totems towards the big boss at IC.

Ah, he was just moody then. I felt I had to work harder on raidhealing than I normally do.. :p

Saturday 11th July

Not a terribad raid if you consider we almost didn't have enough signups to do this with (late cancellations and disappearing reservists, etc). But we finished the place, so Monday is just Malygos. Nothing new in the raid - bosses were all killed in normal mode. End of review!