First night in Ulduar brings the pain

I logged on last night to some good news: one, that the instance servers were much, much more stable than they’ve been in the last few days, and two, apparently no one was saved from the guild’s two previous Ulduar attempts because they never got a shot at the Flame Leviathan. This was promising because it meant putting together a 10man would be a little easier.

As the two group leaders were wrangling in officer chat over who would take whom, it was proposed that, hell, since so many people were on we should try 25man Ulduar.

In hindsight this was a terrible idea.

But, first, some initial impressions. Ulduar, from what I’ve seen so far, is an awesome place. The scope is amazing, the art is gorgeous, and the design is fun in a way few instances in WoW are. The vehicle part, which I thought would be an annoying clusterfark was actually a nice change of pace (although I can definitely see it getting old a few months from now when we have the place on farm).

FL was basically a loot piñata, we wiped once while learning the mechanics, and the second time were easily took it out while only causing one system shutdown. The loot was a dps mail piece, cloth dps gloves, and the Leviathan’s Coil. Alas, Fortune did not smile and that delicious morsel went to Taunty the DK tank. Grrr.

At least I got my first Emblem of Conquest. 57 more until I can buy a T8 piece…

After Flame Leviathan, I was absolutely shocked to see there was only one trash pull between us and Ignis, and then no trash before Razorscale. I could see XT in the distance, but I didn’t see trash. Is any back there?

In any case, we decided to do Razorscale, since concerns were raised if Ignis was still bugging out and meleeing whoever was in the slag pot. Personally, I was really curious and wanted to see if that trash was as hurty as it’s been said. Considered a quick ninja pull, but then decided that’d probably not end well. Oh well. Next time, I suppose.

Now overall, Razorscale was a massive pain the butt. We never managed to down him because we were having major dps issues (at least, in my opinion). The way the fight goes is that during the air phase Iron Dwarves emerge from drill pods randomly in the area, three at a time. Tanks need to pick up the adds when they pop near them before the adds kill the fleshy dwarves that are trying to fix the harpoon guns.

Occasionally an Iron Vrykul comes out of a pod (you can tell cause they are much taller than the dwarves) and proceeds to whirlwind all your melee and healers. Once we figured out the deal with those guys, they soon began evoking “SENTINEL” cries of horror in vent.

While in the air, Razorscale will launch fireballs at the raid, and some of those fireballs will leave a blue aoe flame. These things hurt a lot and are impossible to heal through. Of course, despite “Don’t stand in the bad shite” being a primary lesson of WoW since before TBC, we still had a lot of unnecessary deaths to the stupid flames.

I think our major issue was the gear in our guild right now isn’t up to par with what Ulduar25 requires. I mean, Uld25 is generally iLevel 226 encounters, at least, that’s the gear expectation. Most of the people in my guild are mostly decked out with iLevel 200 gear with a smattering of 213. Only a few of us are full 213 with some 226 stuff from Maly/KT.

We really need to focus on Ulduar 10 for now, where our gear is a better fit. Then, when we know the fights and we have a healthy amount of iLevel 119 gear, we’ll come back to 25man with a screaming and terrible vengeance.

We can do it, just need to build up a little and break ourselves free of the complacency that Naxx falsely insulated us with. Training wheels are off!

Lastly, after the Razorscale wipes some people had to go, so we went to Emalon and proceeded to wipe on that too because we didn’t have enough dps to kill the overcharged adds.

I’m starting to sense a pattern here, haha.