As for the arena. My biggest difficulty was identifying the next target. As things get pretty crowded in there I find that a large amount of DPS is lost running around looking for what it is I am supposed to be hitting. The marking is sporadic and the targets never seem to be in the same area. The tank is running around trying to grab aggro and the DPS is chasing behind. It sort of feels like Razerscale did in our very first Ulduar runs. Alot of people running around trying to do damage to God Knows what.

Tunnel – DK tank, Disc priest, Holy Paladin, 2-3 hunters, boomkin, and some ret pallies or maybe a feral druid (six DPS total).

Arena – Bear tank, Prot Paladin, 2 trees, a resto shaman, and me (holy paladin). Plus the rest of our DPS. Rogues use ToT/FoK to help with agro, and we point DPS/assist the targets instead of AoEing them (equals greater survivability). On nights with no Protadin – I heal 51/20/0 and run RF.

I’m not quite sure which targets they kill first – I think the big guys with the WW and/or the healers in close order – then AoE down the rest if there are no ’special’ mobs remaining.

Once P2 starts, everyone spreads out and avoids the lightning, with the tanks taunting after unbalancing strikes. Sacrifice/Pain Suppression/etc are rotated after 5 or so stacks.

Good luck! Fortunately, while he’s a tough normal boss – he’s fairly easy on Hard Mode (wear the Frost Resist ring) compared to the other 3.

@J: Glad to hear it, best of luck to your guild. Hopefully we’ll have the same luck next time we try the fight, haha.

@Vorian: Ah that’s rough! I’m paranoid about situations like that so I always keep a list of gear upgrades I want handy so I won’t accidentally let them pass by.

kicked myself later when i was checking some BiS lists..

i have possibly never raged like that before *sigh*

Both of us in the arena are tankadins who glyph and spec just like you. We have two rogues who do nothing but spam fan of knives and tricks of the trade to help us pick up aggro on everything that comes our way. We like to have everybody kill the big guys first and then just waste everyone else as soon as possible. Usually I wear a couple of block set items on this fight.

The main tank in the tunnel is a warrior who is accompanied by a ret pally who goes prot (dual spec FTW) just to help keep things fast in the tunnel. The prot pally puills the first group and the warrior runs ahead and begins working on the next one. The the prot pally picks up the remining mobs as the warrior heads straight away into the next mob. That way things are going really fast in the tunnel so that arena is not given a chance to get overwhelmed. By the way, this strategy requires awesome mobile heals!

Anyways, thanks for all the great work and effort you out into your awesome blog! :)

We just initiated a strategy that effectively gets us through to Phase 2 (I normally tank the Arena) and even Phase 2 is now running very smoothly (phase 2 is more about DPS execution than anything else). This week we nailed him on the 2nd or 3rd attempt and are foreseeing smoother kills on him going forward.

Great fight!

And hell yeah, grats on downing Freya. Flux has killed Auriaya as of last night, and ready for the Keepers of Ulduar “headbanging against the wall”, YAY!?
Oh and our GM got the first Fragment of val’anyr from Kologarn (We let him keep it just to see if that could help him yell at us a bit less on wipes, and because it was his birthday)