Ulduar Feedback Thread

Just lol at that picture....

There are enchants that reduce threat? I actually didnt know that. I am really out of date with enchants I only really know the Vanila ones

D

Pretty picture!

Ignis: well, the main problem with my tank gear is that it's not properly gemmed and enchanted. I should probably also get a speed enchantment on my boots, since most me my "tanking" is kiting-based.
I might be wrong, but I don't think L70 tank gear is the way to go here

Kologarn: yeah, as soon as we sort the bit with the arm out, he should be in the bag.
I'll try dropping a Death and Decay on the adds before I move on to the body, just to add some more damage to the adds, but should be fine if our ranged DPS is on the adds.

Derky wrote:There are enchants that reduce threat? I actually didnt know that. I am really out of date with enchants I only really know the Vanila ones

- Enchant Cloak - Wisdom (at least 2% subtlety + 10 spirit lulz). There's a BC one that only gives the subtlety, if you don't want to be caught with a spirit enchant..

Also:
- Vigilance, lets a warrior transfer threat and damage from you to them (30 minute buff).
- Shrouding Potion, from the Shroomies (exalted), shared cooldown with mana/health pots.
- Bracing Earthsiege Diamond, metagem with 25 spell power and 2% subtlety (more red than blue).

Marveen wrote:

Derky wrote:There are enchants that reduce threat? I actually didnt know that. I am really out of date with enchants I only really know the Vanila ones

- Enchant Cloak - Wisdom (at least 2% subtlety + 10 spirit lulz). There's a BC one that only gives the subtlety, if you don't want to be caught with a spirit enchant..

Also:
- Vigilance, lets a warrior transfer threat and damage from you to them (30 minute buff).
- Shrouding Potion, from the Shroomies (exalted), shared cooldown with mana/health pots.
- Bracing Earthsiege Diamond, metagem with 25 spell power and 2% subtlety (more red than blue).

Ah a new about them actually, the wisdom one I have avoided for that very reason.

The Shrouding potion doesnt work, never has. It works more like "Soothe" spells than a reduction of threat.

The others are not really an option for a healer. (In my position) so I guess ill look at getting Wisdom done.

D

Kayte wrote:

Derky wrote:

Not sure what Pryn is, but I am a elixir master so I have the chance to make more than 2 flasks at a time, to the max of 6 from one set of mats.

Kayte is also I believe.

No, potion master, sorry

(can still make flasks for people ofc)

Yup, I'm Elixirs too so I have the same chances of additional procs on flasks, just give me a shout if you want anything, I'll try spend some time herbing in the coming days to grab some Frost Lotus. I might not be geared up enough to come help in Ulduar (yet!) but I'll certainly give a hand from the side lines

New and updated image for Kologarn:



Things that really helped were keeping the throw spot clear (the place where those in the hand get dropped/killed to, this avoided someone landing being hit by lasers. Also, ranged should spread out as much as possible so it's perfectly clear who is going to be chased.

Healing: we had one dedicated healer to each tank (sticking with them through the switches), and the last one raid healing (with help from the other two). Also, healers need to stay alert to make sure they pick up each others' load if one of the other two gets beamed/grabbed.

I read that the melee only get beamed if he can see them, so if you hug his torso/the edge as much as possible you should avoid beams altogether? Anyway, it felt very good to get that kill, and very good job done! We had a few lolwipes ("Who's healing Cardinal?" >.<), that's something to work on - but otherwise good dedication got us the lewts! Grats to Cardinal and Tae on new shinies!

On Auriaya: lol? Seems we just needed to clear one pair of sentries, and the pull would be in the bag. Not sure exactly what we did here, kinda facerolled my way through it spamming heals everywhere. Those (group or raidwide?) tremor totems really made our day! <3 We had one healer keeping Cardinal alive on the boss, the other two on OT/raid duty - and everyone remember to stay in front of the boss always. Was it really that simple?

Grats to me for a new moonface - I'll soon let you know who got the BoE belt in the end!

The Iron Council - we were making really good progress here, but by now the raid was tired. Gimil did his usual Drunkendwarvery with the OTed bosses in the centre of the room, and Cardinal tanked the current focus in the northern circle, by the door. This is a race against time BUT - will the OTed bosses heal up when the nuked one dies? If not, we will gain a lot by putting a dps on the OTed ones - the overall damage done shouldn't drop that much (dps on boss 1 or 2 they still all have to die) and it would help control that AoE lightning whirlwind he does (it's megadamage!) (they heal each other up to full on death). Especially as the littlest boss needs heavy ranged damage in phase 3 (when he's last dorf standing)!

We had D keeping Gimil alive, and Zuzu and me on the MT/raid. The raid healers need to watch their position - don't stand near ranged dps and chain lightning to them, and don't get too close to the little boss and get Overloaded (>.<). The critical thing last night was making sure people had enough health to survive one tick of the Rune of Death (=green goo) before they ran out - I am sure we'll do much better when people are fresh and clearheaded. There was some magic decursing (and purging) to be done as well - I assume Zuzu and D were coping just fine with that?

In general - we're assigning one Lunch Lady () to handle feasts to avoid triple buffets like we had last night. So if you brought feasts you want to share, hand them to this person (they're not BoP anymore!) and they will lay out a spread before each boss.

Good raid.

For some reason my damage dealt was much lower than usual, this was partially a result of me getting eye-beamed and gripped quite a lot.
Though I am willing to attribute it to the PIE. I'll take a look at the WWS, see if I can figure out a what I was doing .

Kologarn: I think you may be right on the positioning to avoid the eye-beam. I tried some new positions yesterday (not as close), and experienced a lot of grips and beams, though it night just have been bad luck... I'll make sure to try next reset.

All parts of Kologarn have huge melee ranges, which I found to be a problem, several times ended up nuking the wrong arm. I found it really helped to mark the other arm with a cross and the body with any symbol (not skull), and just focus on nuking the unmarked arm.
The adds were handled smoothly, though I did chip in whith some extra nukes when needed.

In the end, I decided to spam my cleanse on Card when he gets that Fusion Punch (?) debuff that does massive damage to him. This kept the healers free to keep healing and hardly effected my rotation at all. I generally get the debuff off of Card wihin the first second (ish) of it being cast on him.

Tremor totems seem to be group wide not raid.

Mnemo wrote:Good raid.

The adds were handled smoothly, though I did chip in whith some extra nukes when needed.

Mm, the RNG was often against me during the add phase with regards to eyelazorz, so a bit of extra AOE is always welcome if I'm running around and not blizzarding

Gimi, could you post what the OT does on the Iron Council and what you learnt, as all I could see is you running around like a bat out of hell at the back, and I'll need to explain the tactics to Blobb or whoever if you're not there!

Tremor Totems by tooltip are raid wide, however they nerfed them to pulse (or hotfixed them I should say) to pulse every 3 seconds rather than every 1 as they were pre-3.1, so I refreshed by tremor totem when the CD for fear was on 2 or 3 seconds to go. Since they pulse on placement. In addition to having Tae's tremor totem down this almost meant that we were having them each on seperate pulsing times. It is highly possible that we fluked it so we had a tremor pulse every 1.5 seconds. Either way it seemed to help a lot, and thankfully Taq's HoW made up for the lost Str and Agil from SoE Totem not being down.

As for the raid, lots of fun, really enjoyed it. Still having some targetting issues on Kologarn's right arm, I found that on the left hand-side of it it was easy enough to target it without being spammed with "Target is not in fron of you" issue. Will work on position on next reset; however if healing range is fine then I'll stay on the left as it leaves a longer path to avoid the eye-beams with.

Edit: Did some research and it seems that the tooltips need some work, since there are some that refer to "party", some that refer to "group" and some that refer to both "party and raid" or "group and raid". Tremor totem as far as I can see only works with the five people within your own group. Therefore next time just throw me or Tae in group with the two tanks and two healers?

Random thoughts on Ignis from my research...

-In the upcoming patch Ignis has lost 1.5 million health, and the flame patches on the ground have had a damage nerf. He is apparently much easier now.

- Druid Roots are the preferred form of CC for the adds. They last so long you only need to use it once per add.

- It is possible for the OT to just stand in the fire now and hold the adds, if you have no CC, but this requires heavy healing and the best geared tank.

- The adds do explode when they die, but they can't move when molten, so a ranged is essential.

- Apparently it is possible to tank Ignis facing the water. This extinguishes all his flame patches immediately and the raid can just stand behind him and nuke their little hearts out. The OT tanks the adds. The fight then becomes a DPS race to kill Ignis before he kills the MT. This requires MAJOR tank healing, but no movement.

Good raid!

Cliff-notes comments!

Flame Leviathan:
Not much to comment on... except that during the trash, THE SPIDERS NEEDS TO DIE. This is not optional - and a solo Demolisher cannot take one (much less 2) out alone!

Razorscale:
Well, we've solified our strat, and she's been nerfed.
One-shot.

Ignis:
Changed strat, now a DPS race (we did just under 20k raid DPS), with Ignis tanked so that he places the scorched-earth into the water (instantly extinguishing it), with the off-tank just grabbing the adds.

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that for Hardmode, this will need to change. Also need to make sure the encounter isn't changed to disallow this strat.
(Guess I'll look at that tonight)

Deconstructor:
I still think there's something wrong with the trash. But no matter, Deconstructor got a lot easier once we realized there was trash adding in the waves...

The Deconstructor himself was fairly easy once we sorted out some early problems, rolling a DPS of 23.3k.

Kologarn:
21k raid DPS.
One-shot.

Auriaya:
We learned not to underestimate her.
The pull makes or breaks the fight.

Iron Council:
5 attempts then kill. Nice progression between fights.

Pre-Hodir trash:
The piles of snow cause worms to spawn, not related to other trash.
Pop the snowmounds before you pull other trash...

Champions of Hodir were fairly easy tank and spank with an AoE (cone?) freeze-spray.

The big elemental packs... the big guy had a shield, so kill him first, then nuke the small(er) ones.

Hodir:
Stand in the big rune circles (I guess) when he casts flash freeze...
spread out (I Guess, to avoid the falling stalagmites?)

... not much more to gather from the very brief fight last night

I'll have some more Hodir info up later in the day.

There is no hard mode for Ignis, so our strategy can remain unchanged unless they somehow change the fight, but the flames were designed to be extinguished in the water, so I don't think they will.

The following bosses have hard modes:

Flame Leviathan
XT
Iron Council
Freya
Hodir
Thorim
Miriron
Vezax
Yogg

And Algalon who doesn't have an easy mode.

Nice farmraid, with plenty of kills and loot all around.

I tried a Demolisher at Flame Leviathan (with Taq as passenger) - staying a bit behind the pack so I could use my cannon (it has a minimum range), but ended up caught up by a spider and obliterated! Was easy enough otherwise, though I'd like to read up on what the pyrite does exactly as I'm not sure I was dropping it at the right time always.. Flinging passengers was fun, though only doable once in the fight, and it wasn't a problem helping to pick up the turretslayers afterwards either (as long as not being chased). We do need 2 choppers for the gauntlet, right?

Razorscale seemed quite considerably nerfed - healing was easy and the fireballs were only taking 20% of people's health or so.. :/ I know we've got better, but it's a bit sad to see heavy nerfs so early into the instance. Let's stay ahead of the pack!

Ignis - the new strategy felt almost like an exploit although it makes sense considering that we're taught to use the forge pools to douse fire (the jumpy flames). On that note - the Oracles were in combat for about 10 minutes on the trash leading into Ignis, so all I can say to the new mana regen nerfs is LOL... Cardinal and Blobb were easy to keep alive, the hard bit is focusing so you're not caught in a spell-lock during a Scorch (which caused the first wipe). It's a long fight and damage ramps up but it's predictable and our tanks felt quite solid throughout.

XT-002 was fun! I can't believe we forgot about the trash, and I hope Dahl got us well and thoroughly frapsed for that.. XD He's been nerfed a lot (edit: XT-002, not Dahl), both regarding to damage output and enrage duration. Nice and easy fight now.

Kologarn was nerfified too (I sense a pattern) - not much to say here. People weren't squeezed nearly as hard as last week, either.

Auriaya - as Taq says, the pull makes or breaks the fight. One thing is IF we bring 2 shamans again, split the tanks and healers up. The tank group lost their shaman early so they couldn't avoid the fears after a minute of the fight, although it wasn't critical with the group we brought last night.

Iron Council - I noobed up on the kill and got too close as Brundir landed in phase3. Overloaded tree! Still, very nicely done. Blobb did some nice OTing, keeping the adds far enough away that the kill groups and healers had room to move. Healing was quite manic in phase 2 - if anyone drops below 50% health they will die to green goo. I was worried about phase 3, expecting a progression in healing difficulty, but we were over the hump of phase 2. My only suggestion would be for the Oracles to spread out more as this phase starts so we have everyone covered (grab one circle each and stay in it? The two MT/raid healers can share the circle by the door and the middle left one, and the OT healer can grab the middle right one - adjusting for where the boss lands) when the spark/running starts. Am I right to assume you can soak the sparks (if you get healing) as long as they don't chain? Or do you need to kite the sparks?

There's an achievement for killing different bosses last ("I choose you <bossname>"), so we can try leaving middle guy up next week..

Hodir - I saw the same purple icon of the freeze that Keristrasza has (Nexus), and the debuff went away when I moved, so people need to watch their stacks and jump. I tried chasing the runes (only saw one kind), a bit like chasing domes at Malygos in phase 2. They didn't seem to do much damage, even the stalagmites didn't hit me (bugged or just lucky?). So will read up a bit on this boss before Saturday's run.

The trash leading up to Hodir was surprising - haven't seen a trash gauntlet like that in a while. I feel we should have a skinner along, seeing all that leather go to waste and it probably drops epic Ulduar-only mats.. Hmm, maybe I should change from Mining to Skinning - Master of Anatomy will be tasty in kitty spec.

Looks like I missed an amazing raid with lots of kills

Bring on Saturday wipe night for the reason fun tbh ! :p

D

Made one for XT-deconstructor:



And one of the Iron Council:



Note that the entrance is shown at the bottom (the real room is upside down, with the entrance at the north side). Healers should try to stick to one circle each!

Love the pictures, Marv. Useful and artistic :p.

Can't really say more than what's already been said, was an awesome raid. The nerfs are good and a bad thing, but I'm glad we've got to bosses now which seem to have had few changes since release .

Unfortunately Fraps was unsuccessul last night, since I had limited time to set it up prior to the raid due to parent problems :p. I'll record it tomorrow once I've optimized everything on my PC so it won't lolfail my PC .

Notes:

XT - it looked like his adds had been increased in number but significantly reduced in speed and they are also effected by Earthbind now which makes it a lot easier. The only problem seemed to be the limited range damage on the bombs; at least mine and Bal's side.

Hodir downed.

Talk about a fight with moving parts! After 13 tries we finally got him down, and it felt GREAT to get over that hump in the middle.

Tanking: I've read strats this morning and all say there needs to be 2 tanks, one in FrR gear and the other in normal tank gear. We did it with just one (we are THAT awesome!), and as D said not sure the FrR gear was needed in the end, although it helped while learning.

Edit: the FrR cap against level 83 mobs is 415 (=75% mitigation).

Healing: So many moving parts - I kept running around in circles, dodging Icicles and making sure everyone was HoTed before the Frozen Blows (and trying to remember to get on a Snowdrift before the Flash Freeze which took me a loooong while to learn >.<). Frozen Blows add 35k+ frost damage to his melee hits (affect the tank) and AoE the raid for 40k damage each over 20 seconds. With FrR Aura, that was cut by a third to about 27k damage over 20 seconds. It's still a lot of healing to be done, but we showed it was doable - it really helps if the ranged huddle up on the warning, as our AoE heals will get to you much faster! I managed to use Tranquility twice (4 minute cooldown) in the same fight if I used it on the first Frozen Blows.

Decursing: Not sure how big a problem this was, but we can probably do a deal with Zuzu to Mass Dispel the melee once we start trying to kill him fast. I can shift out of cc so it's not a problem for me (other than the loss of global cooldown). The dorfette can help decursing!

The adds: There are 4 - a dwarf priest, a shaman, a moonkin and a gnome mage. The (melee) shaman will buff one nearby player with Storm Cloud, which can jump to 4 others nearby and buff them with Storm Power (+135% crit) for 30 seconds. The moonkin creates Starlight, which is a pillar of light that boosts your haste while standing in it (it despawns after a minute). And the mage creates Toasty Fires that make you immune to the stacking Biting Cold AND to the Flash Freeze (PLEASE CONFIRM!). The Toasty Fire will also debuff Hodir with Singed, which adds fire damage to spell/ranged attacks AND adds 2% more damage per stack of Singed (up to 30 stacks - that's up to 60% extra ranged damage).

Toasty Fires and Starlights can be extinguished by Icicles, and will be extinguished by Flash Freeze. If you stand in a Starlight while buffed with Storm Power and are within range of a Toasty Fire, you get an achievement!

The adds can't be healed by us, but the dorfette will heal the others, the gnome will free her quickly.

Very fun (if frustrating) fight to learn - to enable Hard mode we need to kill Hodir before he smashes the extra loot chest, and given how we weren't even close to the enrage (<3 the Coastrunners), we should be able to do this soon. Just a matter of learning to use the adds to keep ourselves buffed. It feels good to be ahead of the nerf train too! Let's see if we can do a couple of the other Keepers on Monday before the reset..

Some questions:

- Are the Icicles targeted or completely random? Would it help space them out if Hodir was kited in a wide circle?
- Do the adds move around, and if so can we control where they go?

Reading right and left..
Hodir
Icicles are random but they fall after 4 seconds of "snow rain". So, targets must move fast out of them.
NPCs must be liberated from frost too, or they die on next freeze. So help them
The priest can mass dispell frozen targets (yes, the lazy one)
Casters must hug camp fires, and also have no reason to stay inside the 10 yards from Hodir
I think you can get a debuf from all NPCs (also is an achievement) so.. no jumping AND better haste together

Freya
This is from wowwiki.com and seems helpfull: Freya strategy
main points: killing waves enables us at last to kill Freya who is HoTed well.
wave type 1 has to be killed all on aprox same time - and we need ranged dps
wave type 2 has small untankable creatures who AoE on death, so must be killed away from us
wave type 3 "You with the debuf: run away!" and also casters stay under the mushrooms to avoid silence

We had 14 tries on Hodir before we killed him, 13 non-stop wipes -- and I still had a great time. Murloc power!

WMD has some of the smartest melee DPS in the game, and anybody who says you need ranged obviously hasn't played with them. I've been hearing you can't do it with only melee since Grobbulus.

The solution to Freya's exploding adds is to AOE them all down to low health, then single-target them to finish them off, so they don't all explode together and wipe the raid. You have 12 seconds to kill them all and they've got very low health.

The video for Freya has been added to the video tactics thread, if anybody wants to brace themselves for tonight.

I am undecided at the moment whether to go for Mimiron or Thorim afterwards.

Cardinal wrote:
WMD has some of the smartest melee DPS in the game, and anybody who says you need ranged obviously hasn't played with them. I've been hearing you can't do it with only melee since Grobbulus.

What a truly perfect statement. We do, and we have beaten encounters that "Must have ranged" with melee groups. We adapt so well.

If there were achievements for doing things the none normal way we would be rocking that boat! But for now we get self satisfaction.

Some great raids recently, hope we can keep up that morale level.

Nothing to really add on the tactics. Everything has been summed up before I get here again!

Though, the Hodir fight was a massive learning curve for me. Needing to heal on that level and move at the same time. Thank fuck Blizzard introduced Haste is all I have to say!

D

I've decided to have a look at the videos for Freya, Thorim and Mimiron (for a change, I normally like going in blind on first night).

They look like longer fights than we've seen so far, with 10+ min enrages (or none). Oracles - if you're starting to feel your mana pool stretched this deep into Ulduar, there are food buffs that boost regen (Spirit/MP5/Crit). If you don't have the recipe yet, just bring the fish/meat to the raid and I'll cook them up (will bring spices). If it turns out ooming is the thing keeping us from getting a kill, we can then switch to eating Rhino Dogs/Cuttlefish/Spicy Fried Herring and leave the Fish Feasts to the tanks/dps. We rarely go oom, and I want us to maintain that record!

On the plus side, there doesn't seem to be as much moving for these three keepers as there was for Hodir..

Hodir: interesting fight. Very chaotic with the 4 NPCs buffs and random people getting frozen. It's pretty clear we had him sorted fairly early, just needed everything to fall into place, and people to stop failing on the flash freezes (including me!)

Good killl, but looking at the hard mode we've hint a bit to go still.
Hodir's hardmode is to kill him in under 2 minutes - which is something we can start working on without special preparation, just a matter of getting better at killing him .

I think we should give a hardmode a shot next reset - like breaking Deconstructor's heart on 2-3 pulls to get a feel for it, before moving on (if it's out of reach.)

I hot to see parts of the Thorim fight yesterday, but I think I'll keep those observations to myself till we get there (unless requested otherwise)

Next boss after Freya? I gear Thorim is easier, but Mimiron sounds pretty interesting.

Overall feel of our progress so far is positive, keep us the good raiding!