The weekend that was in Ulduar

Gah, more catch up on raid recaps! I apologize for the non-posting on Friday. Hectic day so I didn’t get the chance to recap the doings and ongoings of Thursday’s raid. And with this weekend’s raiding, I’m triply behind.

Thursday

Panic attacks aside, if you recall from my previous raid post, we had downed two of the the Keepers and now needed to focus on Freya and Mimiron. I had originally joked that we would save Ignis for last, but it was decided that not having that Siege of Ulduar achievement yet was sort of dopey so we backtracked to take him out.

On 10man you have a little more leeway with the adds, so what we eventually did for a strategy was I tanked Ignis in one of the water pools so scorch would be quenched instantly. Demo would kite the adds up and down the room with the occasional help of a mage and hunter. Everyone basically focused on nuking the boss and we zerged him down. Here’s a link to the WWS to you can see what kind of dps the raid was putting out.

After spending some time on getting Ignis down, we returned to the innards of Ulduar to start on Freya. First of all, the adds in there are absolutely nuts. There are so many, and each pack seems to follow the new formula of one giant mob reducing AOE damage while alive, so no zerging, na-na.

And what a surprise Elder Ironbark turned out to be! He’d periodically get a buff where he could in essence one-shot a tank, so I’d wait in the wings and when he gained that buff I’d taunt him off Demo and run around like a headless chicken hoping not to get clobbered to death. And the physical damage reflection shield he’d get from time to time? Icing on the pain cake.

We spent what was perhaps wayyyy too much time on Freya trash before we finally made it to her. The fight isn’t terribly complicated, it just requires a lot of on-the-fly reaction. She basically heals herself to full until all her buff stacks drop off, and the only way to do that is to kill the adds. So you go through several add phases (I think we did like 8) and then when the buff is gone she’s a complete tank and spank.

I won’t go play by play here, but special notes for my fellow offtanks: when the giant tree is up, drag it under a mushroom quick, because the silence aura means you aren’t generating threat. With the exploding lashers, be careful not to HotR them. You can’t hold aggro, and hitting that many at once is just asking to overwhelm the healers.

On that three-pack, don’t hit the Snaplasher (each time he takes damage he gains a buff that increases damage he deals), so focus the other two and get them down to 10% or so, then nuke Snaplasher 100-0%, then finish the other two off.

Total cake walk once you get the execution down.

With Freya down we still had plenty of time to try Mimiron, but that was assuming we could get through the trash. The trash leading to this guy is crazy nuts. Basically, the mechagnomes explode when they die, which melee needs to watch, and at 20% the arachnopod drivers eject and start dropping turrets. Melee needs to range the turrets because their AOE hurts. Whoever jumps into the arachnopod can nuke the turrets and driver.

Once passed the trash gauntlet we ran into a really epic looking tram. Amazing touch by Blizzard.

And on the other side we were treated to this view of Mimiron’s Spark of Imagination. Nice to see Blizz has clearly not lost thir touch when it comes to level design.

Right outside the Spark is a circular track with bomblings marching about. Watch out for them, this basically Frogger 2.0, and this time Frogger will chase you back to your group!

As for Mimiron, well, we didn’t down him. We were making progress though, getting to Phase 3 on the last attempt. This is definitely a fight where I can shine a bit with my abilities. Because the MT takes these crazy hits+dots, it’s imperative for them to blow cooldowns and get assistance to stay alive. Depending on how fast your dps is, you’re looking at between 3 and 4 rounds of the Plasmas.

The system we eventually worked out was Demo would Shield Wall through the first Plasma, the second he would Last Stand and get Pain Supression, and the third I would Hand of Sacrifice him. If there was a forth I would grab the boss and Bubblewall through it, but we were pushing Mimiron to Phase 2 before a 4th Plasma struck.

I really can’t say more about the fight until we get more licks in, unfortunately. Hopefully we’ll down him tonight during our next attempt.

Saturday

After the previous beatings we had taken in Uld25 shortly after the raid debuted, some of us were rightfully wary of marching back in. In light of the recent and numerous nerfs though, it was reasoned that this was as good a time as any.

The reasoning was a good one, and after stomping FL (the Leviathan Coil dropped again and Demo won it with a 13 to my epic roll of 6, haha) we decided to do XT first. Memories of being sauted by Razorscale as fresh in our minds as they were.

Admittedly we didn’t have our best dps in the raid that night, so XT was a little rougher than it should have been, but we eventually got it down. My big chore was gathering up  the adds, but I tended to do my typical taking too many tasks on my shoulders routine (ie, watching Ildara for BoPs, using Divine Sacrifice during Tantrums if I didn’t have any adds, running over to drop consecrates under the Scrapbots, stunning the walking bombs before they made it to melee, etc.). Exhausting fight, as you can imagine.

We had some hiccups here and there, but eventually we prevailed and what should drop but the sexy, sexy Shoulderplates of the Deconstructor. Which I then nabbed because Demo got the Coil earlier. So everything worked out for the best.

Disturbing aside: thanks to those shoulders, for one brief and shining day in my tanking career, I was hitcapped. /shudder

Following about 9 attempts at getting XT down and finally succeeded, we then went and two-shotted Razorscale. We definitely would have one shot her if not for the fact that a lot of the people in raid hadn’t set foot in Ulduar before, so they were understandly a bit confused at first.

Alas, no tank loots from this boss.

After Razorscale we made some attempts on Kologarn, but it was running late, so we called it.

Sunday

Egads, more Ignis.

After 6 attempts it was looking like we weren’t going to get him down. We tried several different methods and the conclusion we came to was: we had no idea how best to do this fight. The kitting adds method wouldn’t work, because after a few adds were up I was taking 20-25k melees from the boss (nevermind when a full 10 or so were running around) and kiting the boss around wasn’t working because it killed dps.

Despair was starting to set in. Some had to go so new bodies were brought in to fill the gaps. In officer chat we decided to call it if the next attempt didn’t work.

This time we tried something new, as detailed in this godawful illustration:

Basically that blob that somewhat says Ignis is the boss. He would stay stationary and all I would have to do is turn him. First he’d drop the first scorch (red blog thing) to the left, then I’d turn him so the next scorch hit the water and dissipated, then position him to drop the next scorch on the right. Basically the goal was to keep two scorches up at all times so the two OTs could drag constructs over and a boomkin could room them in place to make them molten.

I honestly don’t get my guild sometimes, because despite 6 attempts of only getting him to 70% somehow we banded together and downed him with only 24 people. It boggles the mind how awesome we can be when we all focus.

No Heart of Iron unfortunately. At least we have the boss on farm, so it shall be mine eventually.

One major issue was had last night was despite only doing 7 attempts on Ignis, we basically spent 2 and a half hours trying the boss. We need to work on our downtime, because there were just the longest, stupidest stretches between each try. When Ignis finally went down it was 10:30 and many had work in the morning.

Alas, that it for Ulduar that night.

Of course, because it was still “early” we wanted to do something before everyone logged. We decided to give Emalon25 a go. And, oh boy, am I glad we did, because not only did we learn that thanks to nerfs we can finally farm this guy, but he also dropped my T8.5 gloves!

Awesomely, as the only tankadin, I snagged those. They’re a bit lackluster right now, but when I get the 2pc bonus they’ll be a lot better.

Apologies for the long post!