I could say that these modes were hard
I received a foreboding suggestion this weekend:
Let’s go for the rusted proto-drake.
Um, okay, that’s an interesting idea. Sure, we haven’t kill Yogg, but I can’t imagine only one Keeper up would be that much more difficult… right? Oh, we’re screwed.
So that odyssey began last night. And by odyssey, I mean “thing we should have been doing two months ago.” We formed up at normal raid time and entered Ulduar determined to start the arduous process of banging out the various hard modes that make up Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10).
Nuke from Orbit
First on the list would be FL with 3 Towers up. We’ve done this on 25man and it really wasn’t much of any contest. We launched two people at the start, a warlock and ele shaman. They bloodlusted and burnt down the turrets causing a shutdown in record time. I keep a 10 stack of Pyrite up the entire fight and ended up pulling 126k dps. Very, very easy.
Heartbreaker
We actually already had this one, but a few were itching for the Aesir’s Edge so we decided to do it again. I tanked XT on the northeast scrap pile and just enjoyed working through my rotation. On the first tantrum I did a bubble+div sac to take some slack off the healers and then Hand of Reckoning’d him at the last second of his cast bar and cancelled bubble to repick up aggro.
During the fight the warlock actually DC’d, but the healers kept him alive to the point that when he reconnected a minute or two later he was able to jump back into dpsing. The only hairy part was when a certain warrior may or may not have died twice to gravity bomb-induced void zones. Ahem.
No Aesir’s Edge, alas.
I Choose You, Runemaster Molgeim
This was an interesting fight to say the least. We approached it like normal mode, I dragged Steelbreaker off to the side and the other two were taken to the other half of the room. Once Steelbreaker was down I went and peeled Molgeim off of the DK tank and held him in my spot, while the dps ran over to kill Bruundir. Once Bruundir was down the real hard mode started and the DK took Molgeim off me so I could turn into Capt. Utility Tank.
When Molgeim is last to die, his two big things are: Rune of Death *really* hurts, and adds are summoned. The adds explode it they reach their aggro target, so ranged needs to dispatch them. I attempted to do my part with Cobalt Bombs and the occasional shield toss, but really I spent most of my time dpsing Molgeim. As long as everyone stays on their toes, it isn’t too hard.
With Open Arms
We already had Disarmed, so we figured we’d give this one a go.
This one’s fun. Basically, you only dps the face and try to avoid doing any damage to the arms. The first two times someone got gripped we broke them out, but it was getting kind of worrisome how low the Right Arm’s hp was getting, so we decided to let everyone die if they got gripped. Three dead raiders later, we got the achievement.
Also, in terms of aggro, I started the fight by building a lead with Avenger’s Shield and an HotR, and didn’t use either for the rest of the fight. I didn’t have any issues keeping aggro with shield slam, Judgement, and Hammer of Wrath (when in execute range).
Crazy Cat Lady
This one was a good gear check for me. I insisted we one tank this and made the DK go dps. We used three healers as well, which I initially doubted but I’m glad we did. At certain points in the fight the damage intake got slightly intense (fears especially) and that extra oomph really helped. In the normal “stand still and do rotation” moments, the damage wasn’t as bad. Damn it feels good to be a shield tank.
I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare
The one hard mode I was truly looking forward to, because it had two pretty sexy tank upgrades for me. Of course, of the two I wanted The Boreal Guard more. I’m a sucker for shields.
We already agreed that if it looked like we weren’t going to get it, we’d just wipe and try again. We had a good group, everyone was competent, there’s no reason we couldn’t down this guy.
So the first go one of the dps died early and we decided it probably was going to be difficult to recover, so we wiped it. Then, the second time we got it to like 30% and that same dps along with the Void Zone Avenger bit it to standing in bad runes. Wiped it again.
Last try, right out of the gate everything went smoothly. Ranged was wailing away, I was keeping the threat ceiling high, no one died to runes. Eventually we pushed it to execute range with a minute still on the clock. Holy shite, I thought, we were going to get it. Hodir drops snowpiles and I scramble on one, ready to leap back into the brink. And then Big Wigs flashes on my screen “Frozen: [Warrior] and [Ele Shaman]“. Oh, and the DK dc’d. Dammit.
“Should we wipe it?” someone asks. 8%, 35 seconds left. Hellz no. Burn that mother down.
The remaining batch of us rip through Hodir and we down him with 26 seconds left on the clock. I immediately sprint over to the frozen cache and spot this sexy beast hiding at the bottom. Like some green-clad stereotype, I leaned into the glowing box, reaching in to grapple the shield, and then popped out with this verdant masterpiece held aloft and triumphant above my head. I could say that I was very excited.
Siffed / Lose Your Illusion
This one was a little more difficult than the others leading up to it. Basically, getting to Thorim in under the hard mode time limit means that during Phase 2 you have Sif flying around and hurling frost bolts at the raid, along with other annoying crap (like freezing people in place). It’s just some added chaos, not too difficult in the great scheme of things. All we did differently was Frost Aura went on when Thorim jumped down and everyone was on their toes with dispels/cleanses and avoiding the lightning bolts.
As you can see we had a little trouble with it. The DK tank died so I ended up tanking Thorim while eating Unbalancing Strikes. If the fight lasted a few more seconds we would have wiped, but we managed to pull it out in the end.
Fun fact: Thorim was actually married to a character from some terrifying Japanese porn.
Armory Feed
I’ve been scared about doing Crazy Cat Lady, but seeing that you one-tanked it I’m a little more confident about the prospect, now.
Since you did Molgeim last, have you done Steelbreaker yet? If you can do Hodir and Thorim, you probably will have no problems with Steelbreaker. You just need to get some good tank healers and some decent DPS (a group that can do Hodir HM should be more than sufficient).
Nice job!
@Rhidach
1 September 2009 at 1:29 pm #
I think we were overly cautious last night. It was obvious after killing Molgeim that easily that Steelbreaker wouldn’t have been that much of a leap. I’m pretty confident we could get it.
@hazmacewillraid
1 September 2009 at 3:05 pm #
Congrats on the hard modes and the shield!
I have to admit, a Rusted Proto is enough motivation to get me pining for a 10-man that does hard modes. Alas…
Oh, and is that the tentacle trinket from Yogg on the last screenshot of Thorim?
Steelbreaker last on 10 man isn’t too big of a challenge. The secret is proper management of the static disruptions. If you screw it up, people will die, and because of the mechanics, one death on that fight will cause a cascading tumult of pain and failure.
The fight that you’ll be breaking your face against the wall during is Mimiron’s hard mode, firefighter. Hope your raid’s good at not standing in fire. Also, your healers will hate you for phase 2.
Also, Antigen, that’s not the yogg trinket. When you kill thorim hard mode, he smites sif, and reveals her to be a yogg-saron influence tenticle.
@IldaraTheDruid
1 September 2009 at 3:57 pm #
Preparing to hate! :)
Grats on the HM progress Rhi.
We kinda did the same until things started to fall apart, on a side note; have you tried to tank razuvious on 10 man? last night the other add controller screwed up on the taunt/Boneshield rotation and his add died, after a while, so did mine since i couldnt keep it up forever.. he then went up and played hero and got 1 shot, so i said whatever… lets die with style (Since he was at around 40% hp still)
To my surprise, the two healers just went bananas with the heals, so i began to burn my trinkets, then bubble, then use that lovely slap-dash mickeymouse cooldown, then trinket again (I have the monarch crab from JC and the heart of iron), then OP defender procced and saved my ass, just to let me use LoH and voilá, Razzy was biting the dust!
Hi Ridach,
Gratz on all the hard mode achievements.
Can you give a list of your addons, as I am heading into raiding for the first time as MT, and your UI lokks really perfect.
Thanks
@Rhidach
2 September 2009 at 8:13 am #
I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, haha, but I did do a post on my UI a few months ago which lists most of them. I’m going to change a few things so I’ll probably do another UI post in the near future.
Thanks,
will get to setting it up right away.
very nice effort!
grats on the achievements :D
[...] our faceplant in TOC we headed over to Ulduar to stomp our some hard modes for our Rusted Proto Drakes. First one of the night was Orbit-uary which after an introductory wipe we killed easily the second [...]