Ulduar Hardmode tactics.

Razorscale

[Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare] is part of the metaachievement [Glory of the Ulduar Raider], so I'll put that feedback here. In short: we failed! The harpoon engineers disagreed with our tactics and slapped the dorfs down, and as we only had one breath phase we ended up with 3-4 dwarves running around in P2. Again, if we have time to burn next week we can have a barbeque session on Razorscale where the tanks just OT adds and the Coastrunners hold fire until just before the breath so it finishes them off? Gimil wasn't hard to heal in the breath, btw. I'm at 5/25 so far.

I've changed the priolist in the first post.

Freya +1/+2 and Yogg+3/+2 aren't technically hardmodes (just harder than normal), and afaik doesn't award hardmode loot.
And I'm not sure if there's any point in learning those fights, rather than go for the real hardmodes (though, I think we should do Yogg+1, there's hardmode loot there, and Yogg+0 is considered on par/more difficult than Algalon.)

I left FL+2/+3 for now... but might come back for that as well.

Are we trying XT Hard with 2 healers on Thursday? Since Akari isn't in the raid and DPS on the heart was very close last Thursday anyway.

Should be fine if we have a ret on JoL duty, there's raidwide splash damage here that it can smoothe over. I'm keen to give it a try.

Thursday 18th

Flame Leviathan: He seems to have an aggro table - at least when he comes out the gate! On the first try I was chased from the start, even if I wasn't the nearest vehicle to him, so I couldn't launch Taq until very late. On the second try I waited with dps until he was chasing the first Siege Engine, and didn't really have an aggro problem after that.

It took 3 Overloads to get him down on the good try. I ran out of pyrite on the first try - I think it was my bad for not going near the downed barrels, although with Taq on the turrets I didn't have a passenger to load up pyrite. I considered driving up to pyrite barrels and loading it myself, but things went a lot more smoothly on the second try. Demolishers seem to need a rotation like this:

- Pull: wait for a SE to get aggro and launch the passenger
- Chase FL and use the standard cannon
- When he overloads, build pyrite stacks (x10)
- Grab passenger, drive by pyrite and the passenger reloads (hope you don't get chased here, if you do try to go by pyrite stacks so you can be reloaded)
- When full on pyrite, launch passenger

And repeat.. Btw, were we running with one or two bikes?

The extra damage wasn't so bad - on the first try I got blinded running through the fire wall, which ended with me getting roasted. On the second try it was just a matter of going through the curtain in a straight line to minimise damage taken. My Demolisher had over 100k more hp than the second Demolisher, so drivers make sure you switch to your high iLevel gear! I'm getting that addon for next week.

XT-002: Awesome healing by D and Zuzu! We had a shaky start with something melting Bal's face, but he was up in time to activate hard mode. With 8'06'' we were well within the enrage timer too, so this is a 2-man healing job to be done from now on! Not sure what to add here, so I'll move on to..

Hodir! 12 tries, and damage seems to start high then taper off throughout the fight. We had 4 good tries (6, 7, 10 and 11) and our best attempt was on the second last try (11). We were what, 10 seconds off getting the achievement on that try?

I'm not sure our healing strategy is working well enough - I'd like to hear D and Zuzu's feedback. We have some RNG working against us with the Frozen Blows on Gimi, but with 1 protadin, 2 rets and a priest we should be able to set up a working rotation of oh-crap abilities to avoid the worst hits here. In 2 minutes we won't get more than 3-4 Frozen Blows altogether, so this is something to improve. Even on our best try he got hit by the random big 20k hits. Question: can you HoSac + bubble to help the MT here? The Frozen Blows add up to 31k extra frost damage per swing, unmitigated. Perhaps the gibs on Gimil were caused by melee trying to dodge icicles and triggering parries from frontal attacks?

From a dps perspective - this fight sucks for ferals! Even without chasing the buffs I kept having to attack Hodir from the side/front to avoid icicles, which really nerfed my damage. Akari, any tips for doing this as an energy user? I will certainly be moonkin here next time.

I believe the key to this achievement is the Singed buff - the haste lights are all over the place (they don't seem to trigger a combat log event either, unlike the storm clouds). I think they should be reserved for the MT to help him keep aggro. The melee can use the crit buff (with occasional haste buffs when they can reach them) but it's a bit too RNG to plan for it. The ranged can control the Singed debuff and keep burning Hodir, so we should work on that - and the singed debuff really helps our hybrids with their spells (shamans and pallies probably gain a lot from this, not sure dks/rogues do, and kitties certainly don't!). What does that mean with regards to the NPC freeing order?

All in all it was a decent first try on this mode. The fight is short but the corpse run is long (we never had to wait for Heroism to be back up! ), so I don't think we should be too hard on ourselves. Even though I was ready to throw my keyboard, monitor, pc and myself out the window last night (), Hodir gave us a lot of trouble even as normal, so it may have been overoptimistic to hope to get him on our first hard mode try. I blame Sartharion!

I thought the reason Gimi died was due to melee hits in quick succesion of each other dealing 18k+ then froze blows on top, which really made no difference.

The fight can be heavily mitigated, as we are pushing DPS people are being less careful during the fight, which is fine. But we also need to make up for it somehow.

I really don't believe we can use 50% damage for 12 seconds twice during the fight, i think its more of a case of not standing in fire and healing through. Mana is intense due to the mistakes made by the raid, less mistakes, more DPS. I really think this will be one of those fights that once we have downed it once, we will own it each week.

D

I agree with D, we cannot afford bubblepaladins due to the 12 seconds with 50% dps, however Zu's something-spell-that-we-use-on-Mimiron and my "Shield wall" + Last stand trinket + Stoneform + possibly HoS if i got a aggro lead should be enough.

As for DPS.

Singed is bread and butter for casters, so the more casters the better.

Basically the way i see it.

- Singed is for spellcasters (it's a passive debuff, but it's them it will affect)
- Thunder cloud is for melee (or anyone not a spelluser firstly)
- Moonbeams are for everyone (varies from class to class how usefull they are)

50% inc overall dmg for spellcasters
135% (or so?) increased critical damage for Thunder cloud users.

I got no idea about the math, but this is how i assume blizz see these two giving about the same boost.

As for our tries there are a few RNG factors.

- Me being able to park the boss on top of a moonbeam AND a add after flash freeze helps due too AOE
- The more luck we have with falling icicles the less movement = more dps, however it should be possible to strafe these no? So as D says, less raid damage, less stress for the healers, less dead Gimil in the end.

Gimilkhâd wrote:- Thunder cloud is for melee (or anyone not a spelluser firstly)

Oof, no - it's key for casters!

The buff is:

Storm Power
Conjures a storm cloud charged with lightning bolts on a random friendly player. While enveloped in this cloud, up to 4 friendly units the player touches will be struck by lightning and charged with Storm Power, increasing their critical strike damage by 135% for 30 sec.

The crit buff is a multiplicative one (like the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond) ... which makes it fairly disgusting for any class with high-scaling crits.

From an EJ mage thread:

On a slightly related note, frostfire specced mages should have hilariously obscene dps on this fight if they follow the storm powers. Might even be worth brushing the dust off 4pt7:

Base * 3.34565 (frostfire crit w/4pt7 CSD)*2.35(Storm Power)= 786% crit dmg multiplier.

And sadly the parse this next quote refers to is gone now, but (with my bolding)...

Compare "Lapsed" (Frostfire) in that parse to me, "SaladFork" (Deep Fire). He had a 40% Storm Power uptime, while mine was 39%, almost identical. Throughout the entire fight I followed a marked Lapsed around the room (it was a different strat to help some players who were unfamiliar with the fight). I outgear Lapsed slightly, and have a spec that should perform better, but it's clear as day that he blew me (and the rest of the DPS) out of the water. I believe he hit 1 million damage done within 10 seconds of the fire being up, and he almost carried the entire group through Hodir hard mode.

With the crit buff from Storm Power, Frostfire is almost without a doubt the superior spec for this fight.

ooh, right, now I see why I should be Frost DPS on Hodir...

(Frost has 70%+ critrate, increased critdamage is going to... be... nice...)

I'll remember that for Saturday.

... wtb the new Sigill... stupid 25-man XT...

Well if the buff benefits anyone with a high crit multiplier more we need to find a way for people without spellpower damage and hich crit multipliers to either 1. spec into something that gives them high crit multipliers or 2. find some other way to boost their damage. As i believe this is where we can potentially gain some?

The info for FFB spec is wery interesting, as it proves that what normally is the strongest raiding spec doesnt nec come out as the strongest one on this fight. Something to look into for everyone

Gimilkhâd wrote:The info for FFB spec is wery interesting, as it proves that what normally is the strongest raiding spec doesnt nec come out as the strongest one on this fight. Something to look into for everyone

Yeah, Ulduar's "interesting" in as much as at least three different mages specs are optimal in different places; Frostfire is king at Hodir, deep Frost is the winner at Vexas-hard (I believe primarily through its mana effiency), and FireTTW or possibly Arcane shine elsewhere (did find a blog post where deep Arcane was also shown to be pretty disgusting at Hodir, mostly through the fact that it has a tremendous potential for burst damage, and stacking that up while hasted and crit-monkeyed leads to pretty obscene numbers)...

Definitely a fight where we need to bust our nuts off stacking buffs.

Those of us without nuts may wish to borrow some so that they can bust those.

It's a frustrating fight, there's a RNG effect to it. That's why our attempts were so different. It also has a boring corpse-run.

From what I can see in the stats, 8 of the 12 wipes were caused by the tank dying first. That's our biggest problem right there. This is not just the healer's fault, it's the DPS's fault for being careless and stretching the healers, and maybe Gimi's for forgetting to move.

It may also be caused by the DPS attacking from the front or sides, and causing Gimi to be parry-gibbed.

Some notes:

* We can buy a few extra seconds at the start by standing further in the room, near the ice blocks. Hodir has a small aggro radius.

* Jheera should have been doing more damage on this fight. In hindsight she should have been standing in the moonlight at all times, even though it makes it harder to stay alive. We need our casters to be getting the haste buffs.

* We can ignore the priest NPC entirely and leave her frozen (until the NPC frees her). We need to get the Shaman out first—he gives the crit boost, then free the Mage, then free the Boomkin.

* The crit buff (Storm Power) is essential. It is the buff that makes or breaks the fight.

* Assuming we are melee heavy as usual, healers and ranged MUST run to the tank to give him the buff. He will then spread it to the melee.

* The range on Storm Power is tiny. You MUST run over to the person with it and make sure you get it above anything else. If we are ever caster heavy, we must run and give it to them.

Here's some random 2'55'' Hodir 10-man kills done by melee heavy groups, after a quick trawl of World of Logs:

- Bear, Holydin/Holy priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/TkSyRSvbMhQkQklW/sum/damageDone/?s=11354&e=11529
- Warrior tank, Holydin/Tree: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-7gr9XcCBhkzeB7Hn/sum/damageDone/?s=6198&e=6373
- Warrior tank, Restomoo/Holydin: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/P2VUUpy1DTYjhBsQ/sum/damageDone/?s=6815&e=6990
- Bear, Tree/Disc priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-yf2K3E4zts6uGzJz/sum/damageDone/?s=8272&e=8447
- Warrior tank, Tree/Holydin: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/N06843M6QShqwulo/sum/damageDone/?s=3369&e=3545
- Warrior tank, Restomoo/Holydin: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-mEnfN3aee1ILpuJj/sum/damageDone/?s=4384&e=4560
- Warrior tank, Holydin/Holy priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3izi30fikBAjQBBg/sum/damageDone/?s=10805&e=10980
- Warrior tank, Restomoo/Holydin/Tree (3 healers!): http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/IIP6wRhp3HB5To8f/sum/damageDone/?s=14937&e=15109

I also found these with a Paladin tank, slightly faster kills - not all are melee heavy groups however:

- Protadin, Restomoo/Holy priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-Q4xfQekmZwjNTrin/sum/damageDone/?s=24854&e=25025
- Protadin, Holydin/Holy priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-Zh8ZLJ288bcqvh5V/sum/damageDone/?s=8995&e=9166
- Protadin, Restomoo/Disc priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/1QUtIBMi39niERtw/sum/damageDone/?s=11651&e=11822
- Protadin, Holydin/Holy priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/Ws9C3tXQDmpfbXOY/sum/damageDone/?s=5545&e=5716

I'm going to do some research on where I should be standing, since I'm not sure whether standing in the moonlight or at the fires is better. Standing at the fires means that I can mostly get into the rhythm and nuke and also keep the singed debuff up, but means I don't get the lovely Moonlight effects. Standing in the moonlight means that I have to cast, jump, cast, jump, cast, jump, run around to another moonlight, repeat, to avoid getting any of the debuffs on me.

Will get back to you on that one.

Marveen wrote:I also found these with a Paladin tank, slightly faster kills - not all are melee heavy groups however:

- Protadin, Restomoo/Holy priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-Q4xfQekmZwjNTrin/sum/damageDone/?s=24854&e=25025
- Protadin, Holydin/Holy priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-Zh8ZLJ288bcqvh5V/sum/damageDone/?s=8995&e=9166
- Protadin, Restomoo/Disc priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/1QUtIBMi39niERtw/sum/damageDone/?s=11651&e=11822
- Protadin, Holydin/Holy priest: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/Ws9C3tXQDmpfbXOY/sum/damageDone/?s=5545&e=5716

On the melee heavy logs, you can see the top DPSer's had Storm Power for over 60% of the fight. One had it for 94% of the fight.

By comparison, Taqwa was the only person in our group to have it for longer than 30% of the fight.

I think we've found our problem. Fortunately it's easy to fix.

After looking at the parses I posted, looks like my problems are a l2p issue (gah!). So now I need to decide whether to keep my offspec feral (higher dps potential, buffs our melee and brings passive healing) or go back to a moonkin offspec (lower dps potential, buffs our casters/healers, harder to fail at). Decisions...

Considering we did our last, best attempts with a Holydin/Disc priest combo, I don't see a problem with having 2 Holydins as healers on this fight. Definitely willing to give it a try!

Freya

We did our first [Knock on Wood] this week. Healing was not noticeably harder than Freya + 0, and became almost trivial once Card and Blobb swapped targets. The only tricky bit was ensuring any rooted people near explodoseeds survived the blast. Would it be best for healers to hug Freya in P2, or spread out? The roots have 13k hp and do about 5k damage per tick, and the seeds explode on anyone within 10 yds for 5k damage each.

Marveen wrote:Freya

We did our first [Knock on Wood] this week. Healing was not noticeably harder than Freya + 0, and became almost trivial once Card and Blobb swapped targets. The only tricky bit was ensuring any rooted people near explodoseeds survived the blast. Would it be best for healers to hug Freya in P2, or spread out? The roots have 13k hp and do about 5k damage per tick, and the seeds explode on anyone within 10 yds for 5k damage each.

Hugging FRAYA is a bad idea imo. You can't see the roots on the floor if too many people stood on her. Spread out at like 3/6/9 O'clock and that should do.

D

I found simple targeting macros quite handy at Freya, saves a bit of looking around at times...

/tar strengthened <- for the roots
/tar Eonar <- for the healy trees

About Iron Council: Steelbreaker gains 15% hp when someone dies (half if MS/Wound poison is up), so we need to do 25k dps before the first tank dies, if we want to do it in 2 Meltdowns. After each Meltdown we'll lose that tank's dps (which is what, ~10% of raid damage?). Examples:

Code:

w/o MS : 100% - 50% = 50% hp
  tank1 dies -> +15% heal = 65% - 40% = 25% hp
  tank2 dies -> +15% heal = 40% - 30% = FAIL
w/o MS : 100% - 55% = 45% hp
  tank1 dies -> +15% heal = 60% - 45% = 15% hp
  tank2 dies -> +15% heal = 30% - 35% = kill
with MS: 100% - 50% = 50% hp
  tank1 dies -> + 8% heal = 58% - 40% = 18% hp
  tank2 dies -> + 8% heal = 25% - 30% = kill

So, without MS/Wound poison we can forget about killing SB hardmode unless we can get him below 50% before we lose the first tank! That's at least 25k dps we need to be able to pull before the first tank dies btw (SB has 3 million hp).

Edit: After the second tank dies it's a wipe unless the first tank resses.

Marveen wrote:After each Meltdown we'll lose that tank's dps (which is what, ~10% of raid damage?)

Good question; while "buffed" with Overwhelming Power the tank is doing triple damage (as it's a +200% buff), might well be more than 10% of damage.

Marveen wrote:So, without MS/Wound poison we can forget about killing SB hardmode unless we can get him below 50% before we lose the first tank! That's at least 25k dps we need to be able to pull before the first tank dies btw (SB has 3 million hp).

I think we were in that region DPS wise - do note that Aimed Shot is in my DPS rotation and also has the 50% healing debuff effect; that said the uptime is probably a bit less than 100% as it's a ten second debuff on a ten second cooldown.

The tank damage boost he gives is ker-razy. I felt like a DK!

Cardinal wrote:The tank damage boost he gives is ker-razy. I felt like a DK!

Did you climax?

Anyway...

I completely forgot about the healing factor last night to this, MS/ Wound poison is just about a must, its up permantly etc. Aimed Shot is good, but not a sure gain.

D

Telluria wrote:

Marveen wrote:After each Meltdown we'll lose that tank's dps (which is what, ~10% of raid damage?)

Good question; while "buffed" with Overwhelming Power the tank is doing triple damage (as it's a +200% buff), might well be more than 10% of damage.

In this case, yes - 16%, more than Jheera and Balgarim for this attempt.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/Lk3vxR370SpaW3LD/sum/damageDone/?s=13086&e=13167

Yes, but you must factor in that Ret's are fudging useless on single target mobs. No two ways about it, we are utterly sheet.

Edit: Toned the language down =)