The Ulduar thread!

[Eaglestrike]

We don't really have one yet and I see people talking about the fights in other threads, so might as well make one.

My thoughts so far: Naxx has made us all lazy. So far the encounters are all challenging, not in a total bullshit way, they're well-made and I enjoy them. They're pretty tough as well, I'm happy for that, but it makes 25-man work a bit much.

Cleared so far:
25-man Flame Leviathan
10-man FL, Razorscale, Deconstructor, Kologarn, Iron Council, Auriaya, Thorim, Freya, Hodir

We spent 4 hours wiping on Razorscale and Deconstructor in 25-man. We couldn't keep people alive during either really, we managed deconstructor to 5% once, made it to 11% with everyone alive but he berserked, switched to dps setup that was much stronger (still missing 5% melee/ranged crit though) but only had a few attempts left and never managed a run with everyone alive afterwards.

For 10-man two tanks and 3 melee took the final 10% of Hodir and finished him for us. Both healers managed to fail and die, all the casters died during that time, so we decided we'd carry them to victory. Ret paladin and myself with Lay on Hands, warrior and I alternated cooldowns (trinket/bubble for me, shield wall/last stand for warrior and blessing of sacrifice on warrior) Also for Thorim I let my healer die halfway through the arena, but a 100hp LoH helped me stay alive through all of that until the other group made it back to us to heal me. Some epic wins in 10-man which make me think 25-man is going to be terrible for those bosses...lol

I'm glad to see challenge is back, part of me just wants to get the bosses down and get the loot, but I'm glad to see I have to try in the game again.

[Dezzimal]

I don't think the encounters are hard, just that we've got to spend a bit of time acclimating to them. At least up to Vezax anyway. So far we've cut through any boss that isn't bugged in a short amount of time, should kill thorim, mimiron and maybe vezax tomorrow.

[Eaglestrike]

I don't think the encounters are hard, just that we've got to spend a bit of time acclimating to them. At least up to Vezax anyway. So far we've cut through any boss that isn't bugged in a short amount of time, should kill thorim and maybe vezax tomorrow.

On which difficulty?

And how'd you deal with the sapper gnomes in Mimiron trash? It wasn't until 3am that we got to them but they were destroying us and we couldn't work around it lol

[Vistani]

The sappers are crowd controllable, but still hard as fuck. Apparently some groups have been DI saccing through them.

[Russta]

A question for the people that have done 10 man - how viable is two healers?

On our mains, we've always ran Naxxramas with just two healers and no Replenishment, even from the day we were in blues. This is what we're hoping to do for Ulduar but I have my doubts it's going to work. I can spec Holy (near BiS) when needed but on fights that require more than one tank, that's not going to work so well. I've made our Enhancement Shaman sort his healing gear but he's not a natural at it.

tl;dr - is two healer Ulduar doable for the most part?

[Eaglestrike]

All of our 10-man kills have been with two healers. But I think most of them involve replenishment (though I'm not sure, I don't think our hunters pick up that talent and our ret paladin hasn't been there every night).

There are also a number of ways to reduce the damage you take, especially over how we've done the fights so far, so I'm sure there's room to learn the fights to where 2 healers with no replenishment can do it.

[NotGreyheim]

XT-002 hits druid tanks like a fucking train...

[njitjk68]

None on hard mode so far.

25man - FL, razorscale, 002, steelbreaker, kologarn

Initial thoughts: First two days blue bar boss was undefeatable, trash mobs hurt, bosses so far seem just about right in terms of difficulty, unless it is bugged.

Looking forward to doing hard modes once we get the hang of it.

[Tymon]

25- FL, razor, 002

Almost got Ignis, seems almost not worth it as how buggy he is atm

[Arcana]

So Far: FL Razor & XT (10m) but going in again within the next 30mins.

im quite happy to see a challenge in it again, trash is coming out with some funky new moves and making you think about how to handle it rather than AoE the shit out of it all, its also nice going in to bosses the first few times blind, especially in XT's case, best boss in game imo.

i've started seeing people attempting to pug 10m Ulduar, and i have to point out these people are looking for pugs with gear & knowledge of the fights, its enough to make you wanna wtf and tell them to try emalon before attempting ulduar bosses.

[Saga]

25-man razorscale down, FL down (derp de derp), skipped Ignis because he's a buggy fucker, and our best attempt on XT002 was 7%. But holy shit I haven't had this much fun in a raid in forever. I think the bosses so far are tuned perfectly. Razorscale was intense, DPS requirements are really high which is a refreshing change from the ho-hum boring bullshit that has been "raiding" the entire xpac. I might be weird, but I like wiping and then blowing through shit, not skipping the wiping part. Haven't had this much fun raiding since BWL.

And thank GOD for fucking difficult trash this time, Magma Ragers are always hysterical to deal with. Which btw, how do people tank? I read tank each one in the corner at the bottom of the steps, I assume melee would be behind them so they get blown back by the tornado, but will they be able to outrun it once it lands? I guess they'll land on the ground quicker considering they're being knocked back uphill, but the ragers cause several deaths per pull for us still.

[Maguspk]

25-man razorscale down, FL down (derp de derp), skipped Ignis because he's a buggy fucker, and our best attempt on XT002 was 7%. But holy shit I haven't had this much fun in a raid in forever. I think the bosses so far are tuned perfectly. Razorscale was intense, DPS requirements are really high which is a refreshing change from the ho-hum boring bullshit that has been "raiding" the entire xpac. I might be weird, but I like wiping and then blowing through shit, not skipping the wiping part. Haven't had this much fun raiding since BWL.

And thank GOD for fucking difficult trash this time, Magma Ragers are always hysterical to deal with. Which btw, how do people tank? I read tank each one in the corner at the bottom of the steps, I assume melee would be behind them so they get blown back by the tornado, but will they be able to outrun it once it lands? I guess they'll land on the ground quicker considering they're being knocked back uphill, but the ragers cause several deaths per pull for us still.

Magma Ragers are easy, I figured out how to deal with them after my 10 man wiped to them after pulling them with some Constructs.

Basically, you just kite them around the rectangular perimeter of the ramp before the boss area just after the Molten Colossus. By kiting them their tornados will always spawn behind them and won't hit the tank, making tanking them a joke. The tornadoes do seem to 'home' onto a target though so if it isn't homing on the tank then you need to run away, that is to say if you're a DPS you need to be aware and move as the ragers move and not fail and get hit by a tornado or you will most likely die. We wiped pretty terribly pulling them the first time, but after going with my plan and kiting them around that rectangular area we didn't lose anyone (just a stupid DPS shaman who didn't even move as a tornado hit him).

Also it's important that you have one tank on both ragers, otherwise the tornados from one will hit the other tank and you'll be walking into them because your tanking paths won't be perfectly synched. So yeah, one tank for both ragers and just kite/dps one down, easy mode.

Ignis is definitely bugged, we tried on 10 man and the adds were just too much. 25 man sounds like the same problem so I will probably just skip it. Uh, Razorscale was a joke on 10 man after they fixed it, such a joke. Hm, tried XT-002 but after reading some other people's posts I think we just didn't have enough DPS to handle taking it down before the tantrums. The tantrums are definitely what make that fight too hard to handle. Looking forward to doing it with the guild tonight, really think if we only bring our good members that we can get past XT.

[aurik]

Did 10-man Razorscale / Council / Auraiya / Hodir / Thorim last night (raid ID wasn't fresh so I didn't get a chance to see 10-man FL, Decons, or Kologarn) Hella fun. Most fights we wiped 1-2 times before figuring it out. Some of the bosses were actually very easy, but that is to be expected since our group was wearing mostly full naxx25 outfits.

The tuning so far seems really good.

Oh and fuck those sappers lmao. We died like 10 times in a row to the first set of 2, then called it a night.

[Bweigelt]

A question for the people that have done 10 man - how viable is two healers?

On our mains, we've always ran Naxxramas with just two healers and no Replenishment, even from the day we were in blues. This is what we're hoping to do for Ulduar but I have my doubts it's going to work. I can spec Holy (near BiS) when needed but on fights that require more than one tank, that's not going to work so well. I've made our Enhancement Shaman sort his healing gear but he's not a natural at it.

tl;dr - is two healer Ulduar doable for the most part?

We had no issue's on XT with two healers although we had our Enhance Shaman switch to Resto for Razorscale as we found the damage to much with just two healers but YMMV. We sort of just winged Razorscale based on what we saw from the first two attempts rather than following a set strat. We'll be going again tonight for Kologarn and onward with probably only two healers, I'll let you know how it goes.

Speaking of the 10m razorscale how do most groups work it? We just tried to stay in two groups one in front of each harpoon and use them as soon as they came up and just hold the adds while she was down. When we did it that way we seemed to get a lot less adds than just running around killing the adds and waiting for a clear spot to hit the harpoons. I'm curious to how others have done it.

[aurik]

In 10-man I would highly recommend 3 healers until you're pushing for hard modes. From my experience last night, we had no issue with having "enough DPS" for all the fights we tried with just 5 dps. That said, those 5 dps are really well geared.

Our setup: rsham/rdruid/hpal healing, war dk tanks (DK dual spec DPS for 1-tank fights), 2 rogues, war, ret, lock.

The hardest fight to heal was definitely hodir. Frozen blows without something to mitigate the frost damage was just really intense. It's like 2.5x as much raid damage as Sapphiron, plus needing to spam heal the tank like he's getting breathed on in 3D Sarth.

Edit: I also walked out with 2 really sweet upgrades,
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45332
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45864

Almost perfectly itemized 219s from a rdruid perspective.

[Maguspk]

We had no issue's on XT with two healers although we had our Enhance Shaman switch to Resto for Razorscale as we found the damage to much with just two healers but YMMV. We sort of just winged Razorscale based on what we saw from the first two attempts rather than following a set strat. We'll be going again tonight for Kologarn and onward with probably only two healers, I'll let you know how it goes.

Speaking of the 10m razorscale how do most groups work it? We just tried to stay in two groups one in front of each harpoon and use them as soon as they came up and just hold the adds while she was down. When we did it that way we seemed to get a lot less adds than just running around killing the adds and waiting for a clear spot to hit the harpoons. I'm curious to how others have done it.

We had both tanks just tank the adds when they popped, let the NPCs help kill and we dps'd them down. Brought the adds to the front of drake when it landed and DPS drake. Then after halfway or whatever we just tank/spanked. Really easy. You do build up a stack though and our MT ended up dieing, I think you should treat it like Gluth and have both tanks just alternate by taunting when the debuff stacks too high.

[Saga]

For the tantrums, here's a huge huge tip: have a ret pally in the raid. When the first tantrum hits, ret pally pops bubble and divine sacrifice. It's on a cap of 30k damage, but that is a lot of healing you don't have to worry about. For the second tantrum you'll just have to heal through it. We had one group comprised of hybrids that are DPS but can heal themselves (druids, pallies, spriests, etc) and then think we had 2 groups that couldnt - one melee and one ranged. Had our healers spot heal melee, throw PoH on us constantly, flash of lights, holy shock, etc. Lots of short, quick, but powerful heals.

On the third tantrum, pally's forbearance will be down and he'll pop hand of protection plus divine sac again and lessen stress on healers for the third time. He shouldn't live to a fourth tantrum (I don't even know if he can).

[Norellicus]

6min enrage so theoretically he could do it 5-6 times.

[Saga]

Yeah, but we usually only ever have three of them by the time we've gotten him low. Only one per phase I've found, but I guess yeah technically he can do it 5-6 times.

[Slott]

In 10-man I would highly recommend 3 healers until you're pushing for hard modes. From my experience last night, we had no issue with having "enough DPS" for all the fights we tried with just 5 dps. That said, those 5 dps are really well geared.

Our setup: rsham/rdruid/hpal healing, war dk tanks (DK dual spec DPS for 1-tank fights), 2 rogues, war, ret, lock.

The hardest fight to heal was definitely hodir. Frozen blows without something to mitigate the frost damage was just really intense. It's like 2.5x as much raid damage as Sapphiron, plus needing to spam heal the tank like he's getting breathed on in 3D Sarth.

Edit: I also walked out with 2 really sweet upgrades,
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45332
Cover of the Keepers - Item - World of Warcraft

Almost perfectly itemized 219s from a rdruid perspective.

Hodir was extremely easy to tank as a bear, and I used my polar gear (I solo tanked the entire fight, instead of bouncing 1 tank for normal mode, one for frozen blows). It's also not too common, so you can use bark skin every frozen blows. With frost resist aura, I had 417 frost resist, and healing me wasn't really difficult at all.

Mimiron is a bitch. A complete bitch.
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