Monday night Ulduar raid recap (now with 100% more screenshots!)

Sorry for the delay in this post, my raid recaps are officially a day behind.

If you’ll recall in my last post, I talked about our group’s multiple attempts to down Iron Council, and despite all the wipes, I boasted that the following evening (aka Monday) we would down them easily. Well, we did. Second try and we downed them! Amazingly, it appears that Blizz nerfed the fight starting yesterday, so some of the things we ran into like the short enrage timer and the huge range of Overload, will be less of an issue moving forward. Still, I’m glad we downed the fight pre-nerf.

They dropped Stormtip and the Runetouched Handwraps.

It being wonderfully early, we marched on to Face Boss (aka Kologarn), to avenge his eating Demogar the previous night. Justice would be done.

It took a few wipes to learn the fight, but the strategy we settled on was myself and Demo tanking Kologarn’s body, and then dps switching back and forth killing arms, with calls going out for grips or eye beams. When the arms die they create like five adds, which we found easiest for a (dps) DK to switch to Frost Presence and pick up and kill away from the raid, because of the aoe damage they seemed to be doing.

Kologarn was promptly smashed to bits and his corpus was splayed all over the chasm he was standing it, forming a bridge to the next section of Ulduar.

Unfortunately, in our exuberance to cross, several of the raid members tried to make it to the other side, but instead fell through a bugged bridge and to their death in the pit below.

After about three people died that way, I decided I could do better. Alas, hubris got the better of me, and I joined my comrades in the pit, but somehow survived the fall. I had to DI someone on the edge so I could release my body and get out of there.

Thankfully we could use the teleporters to cross to the other side, haha.

And as for loot, Face Boss relinquished Stoneguard and the Mark of the Unyielding. The sword was inferior to both my and Demo’s Last Laughs (much to my chagrin, I love swords… axes are so un-Paladin-like), so we passed that to the DK for his DW tank set. The Mark of the Unyielding we then dithered back and forth on, because it had some things that made it better than the Nexus War Champion Beads (more defense, no block rating), but no gem slot. Ultimately I won it, but I don’t think I can figure out a way to use it really.

Once we were all across the bridge Auriaya was in our sights. First we would have to deal with two trash pairs on either side of the wide circle, since she had a fear mechanic, and the last thing we needed was to get feared into those.

The pulls turned out to be pretty fun though, they had this mechanic where they needed to be a certain distance from each other, and if pulled further apart they’d get enraged. However, you didn’t want them too close, because every so often a spark will form at one and travel to the other, and if it reaches its destination, the mob will get a huge damage boost. So when a spark formed, we’d walk both at the same time so the distance was maintained, but the spark couldn’t reach its target.

Gotta say, I appreciate all the thought Blizz put into the trash–more than just another AOE-fest!

As for Auriaya, she was a little bit more difficult because of her fear mechanic. Thankfully, we had a shaman, so Tremor Totem was used to keep the healers from scattering. We wiped a few times, but once we fine-tuned our approach she went down easily.

It was definitely a night for tanks, because she dropped the Shieldwall of the Breaker and Mantle of the Preserver. Demo took the shield because he was still stuck with that blue table-thing that Malygos 10 drops, and I had the Wall of Terror. It was definitely an upgrade for him, which was exciting.

After Auriaya we took a break and then cleared the trash to Hodir to give him a few shots before people had to go. Word to the wise about the Hodir hallway: avoid snow mounds when they have a fog above them, because if you get too close like 7 worms will spawn. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to give Hodir any serious attention, but we definitely could have done the fight.

I must say I am very excited about Ulduar now, after the awful start we had there earlier this week. I fully expect we’ll be able to clear the place in a few weeks once we know all the fights.

Oh, and let’s say “hi” to Sara.