The vortices weren't available until 2.4.0 (Sunwell) was opened and that tier of content was essentially "obsolete", at least two full content patches after the level of gear the vortices afforded was initially available. Furthermore, the nether vortices had a HUGE use outside of dropped patterns - tier 3 blacksmithing weapons (and armor). You can't tell me that weapons like [Stormherald] was almost zero use.

I do think that it is kind of crappy that the recipes are not available outside of 25s, but it may just be that not enough people are doing hard modes to actually see any drop.

On a slightly related note, do the vehicles in Ulduar actually deal more damage with higher item level gear? Or does it only affect their HP?

And yet, you still compare Ulduar 10 to Ulduar 25 as though they're the same level of content. Think of the 25 mans as being a full tier ahead of the 10 man counterpart (which, at least in terms of pure item level, they are) and things are closer cut. By the time 10 mans have progressed to the point where Conquest badges are, and by extension, Runed Orbs, the majority and not the exception for hardmode kills, then the drop patterns will be sat around the same quality. Perhaps to keep things interesting, there'll be new patterns that make use of the Runed Orbs that have been collected by the 10 man teams that will be specifically available to them, but it does seem as though something is missing without there being any source of any patterns for the 10 man raiders at all.

...which was comparatively useless for the vast majority of the player base. I can think of nothing else bar the BS patterns that used Vorticies, prior to 2.4. And I'm pretty sure we can all agree, that weapon was more of an outlier than the norm for Vortex use without drop patterns. Those weapons themselves were sat just outside of T5 itemlevel (a lot closer to T5 than T4).

You can scream and shout all you want, but without doing higher tiers of content, you shouldn't be getting higher tiers of gear, which is precisely what the drop patterns/runed orbs are.

That I can agree on. Until recently, I was a solid 10 man raider that occasionally pugged 25s on the weekend. Perhaps not the same patterns, but definitely something; it's that kind of stuff that made me want to take the jump over to full time 25 man raiding, the fact that I know if somethings going to be implemented I'm going to eventually have access to it, rather than it being perpetually out of my reach.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting conquest badges and runed orbs now and I am a 10-man raider. I currently have little use for the runed orbs, but my guild is saving them. Granted, not very MANY, but still getting them slowly.

I never said that I should be getting runed orbs for doing normal-mode encounters. I think it's fine that they drop in hard-only. I was only pointing out that the comparison to nether vortices was flawed, since a lot of people wanted the vortices specifically for the blacksmithing weapons. The smithing weapons were a lot more widespread than you might think - shaman used the 1H axe and mace, warriors and paladins used the 2H weapons, rogues used the 1H sword and mace. They were all excellent weapons for any melee classes that wasn't a feral druid. Playerbase majority? Maybe. Vast majority? Unlikely.

Why don't you two shut up? People don't come to this thread to watch you two argue about loot.

To get back to the topic, one peculiar bug that appeared last night when trying out Vezax was that I DC'd while standing a Shadow Crash. When I got back on the raid had wiped on that try so I thought nothing more to it and then some minutes later we tried again, but this time Shadow Crash-buff was still on me! I don't know if I did extra damage, I couldn't tell but the haste and mana buffs was indeed there which made it a whole lot easier. It only went away when I first stepped into a Shadow Crash and then exited it. It seemed like too much of an exploit so I chose not to do it again. Ever happened to someone else?

Yep, happened to a warlock of ours. Just doesn't properly remove the aura if you don't leave the range of them by walking out of them or it fading. Surprised they haven't this exploit yet since it will be used for content eventually if they don't remove it soon (though this is the type of thing would get someone banned if they did).

Algalon has a one-hour timer per week so he can't be that difficult. Looking at the amount of hours EJ spent learning fights like Kael and Eredar Twins on previous news posts, Algalon would take a month or so for them if he's around the same difficulty, assuming they're attempting him in 10-mans as well to speed up learning. Since 3.2 is likely out in 5-6 months, that would mean a lot less pre-3.2 Algalon kills than pre-3.0 M'uru kills.

Except that is an artificial roadblock to progression that could be lifted on any Tuesday. I wouldn't draw conclusions about his difficulty based on how many kills you think would happen with the assumptions that nothing changes and that you know the 3.2 release date.

Our first shard came from our first FL kill, with zero towers up. Second shard from Deconstructor normal-mode. Unless you are speaking of 10 man hard-modes, in which case... O_o. And there should never be a 100% chance for a legendary to drop, even if it is just a "shard".

More Ulduar tuning happening today/tomorrow:

Out of all of this, I'd say only the Hodir hard-mode change is warranted, they are really overdoing it. That, and I guess the petrified bark change is welcome for melee, even though it was merely an annoyance.

I do look forward to hearing predator laughs from sappers though.

After 2 nights of both Mimiron 10 and 25 I can definatly confirm that Plasma Blast is "easy" healable without using any cooldowns at all.
Just spamheals by 3 or 8 healers is totaly enough and without all this cd management the phase is way more calm and easy to play.

But we are having a REALLY hard time with healing in Phase 2, after several failed tactics like grouping all in the middle - what worked as long as 3 shamans were spamming bloodlusted chainheals - untill bloodlust was over and people started dieing we tried the boss with 10! healers.
And people were still dieing.
we r now doing 2 circles - 1 melle circle around the Boss and the ranged and healers a 2nd cirle like 20 m from Boss away with people holding like 10 m distance from each other. But once anything goes wrong healers cant catch up anymore.

Is there something we are missing?
Or do our healers just have to learntoplay?

It's even easier if you use cooldowns as well though. Considering how many CDs most raids have access too, there is no reason not to. I'm not sure what aspect of using a cooldown prevents the phase from being calm, it's just 2-3 people remembering to use one ability each.

Assign healers to heal certain group, groups have to position on the same side and the most importal part is:
Every healer must not be assigned to the group he is in.

You shouldn't need bloodlust - save it for P4

Have two healers stand in the little circles closest to the inner ring - have them stack relatively close.

Have dps spread out in between the healers but not on top of them. Everybody except for tanks should be popping health stones this phase to help a bit.

Make sure after each laser barrage that groups move back to their original positions.

Now you have everybody in range of everybody else - if one healer group gets targeted, the other two healer groups can heal them. If dps get targeted, then usually healers aren't being targeted or only have to step to the side a bit to avoid the arcane bursts. We usually avoid assigning healers during this phase because there is so much raid damage going on that every healer literally needs to worry about everybody else.

There is alot of raid healing going on but this strat has worked consistently for us. Having a ret pally switch to fire resist aura usually covers our entire raid.

What healers are you bringing to this fight?

I strongly advocate keeping everyone as close as possible and making sure they're rocket aware, that alone should allow your AOE healers and even paladins via judging light constantly and bombing holy lights around the raid to keep everyone topped off. If you're spreading out and standing further back, you're reducing the effectiveness of your group heals.

Also, how many laser barrages are you going through? If you're bringing 10! healers to the fight, you're prolonging this phase when you want to do the exact opposite.

We found that FFA healing is very, very dangerous in phase 2. The machine-gun + flame wave is huge burst damage, and we needed reliable heals to keep the entire raid topped up rather than having all healers spam reactively.

Our kill-shot was 7 healers; 2 Holy Priests, 1 Disc Priest, 2 Pallies, 1 Druid, 1 Shaman.

Each Holy Priest took a ranged group to solo heal with PoH (pretty easy). Shaman and Druid took a ranged / melee group each, helped by the Priests throwing out PoM / CoH on cooldown.

Disc Priests are exceptional for spot healing in p2. Spamming 6k instant shields with no cooldown is amazing for keeping people alive while the group healers do the bulk of the raw healing.

Going from 1 Holy Priest to 2 Holy + 1 Disc was a night and day difference; 3 hours of messy wipes vs a clean 1 shot kill on the second night. p2 was made for Priests.

Thank you for all the suggestions, looks like there are lot of different ways to do Mimiron Phase 2
In fact that means good game design/balance by Blizzard.

Looks like it comes down to either grouping up to make AoE heals more effective or spreading out to let less people be hit by Laser Barrage.

We tried this grouping up, but then were healers complaining that there is even more raid damage.
Groups helping out eath other seems great in theorie but it seems that our real problem isnt the reaction time but just more the general damage - after some time the whole raid will be around 50% health.

Can someone explain how Rapid Burst works exactly?
It seems like it s covering a era in one direction where the radius is getting bigger as farther u move away.
If it works like that just grouping up kind of in middle d make same amount of people by hit as when making a big circle around him - can someone confirm this?

Does WWS parse the mimiron encounter correctly? I think it is being lumped in with trash on my reports or I would be able to better analyze the damage distribution in that encounter. I'd like to compare incoming damage in p2 with other guilds to see if there's any better ways to reduce it. I know from my experience with 7 healers, we weren't having any problems keeping people up in p2 and our strategies don't sound too different.

As far as I know, it randomly chooses a person and launches a conal aoe in their direction - if you're quick you can sidestrafe out of it. No idea if it follows said person. Note it doesn't actually target a person so you can't watch your target of target and move away from them. If you're melee you should theoretically be able to run to the other side of the boss and avoid all but the first 1-2 tics.

Seeing as YS is now open - did they fix bug with Constrictor tentacles yanking people out of teleporter, and players still getting Mind Controlled? One of those annoying random things that can mess up P2 quite bad. If not - any way to avoid it, beyond "kill it fast and go inside"? It's not always that simple, as they can pop up at worst possible place while you're busy with Crushers on the opposite side, so by the time the player is free, there's no portal to enter.
Also, as I didn't really go inside yet - do people there get all Keeper buffs/Crusher debuffs?

And about P1 - do Guardian do more damage to Sara the closer they are? %hp after explosions aren't very consistent between different attempts, if it did work it could allow finishing it faster.

I don't think its possible so save one add in P1.
She loses different amount of HP but still you will always end up using 8 guardians.

1 Try we made it to have her at 2% after 8 guardians needing a 9th one - but never even close the other way round.

May be bugged, I assume it is intended that you always need 8 guardians.

That 9th Guardian can be a nasty suprise, so I thought maybe it works in the opposite direction, too. Either way, it's not really important, I guess we could save just as much time by pulling more than 1-2 extra adds.

I would advise against doing that if you're having problems with healing in p2. The less movement that happens the better since he will die faster and healers can't heal while on the move.

What we do is have 2 ranged camps and 1 melee. Each camp stands on one of the lanes that converge at the middle. Whenever a laser happens, you rotate one position to the left.
Camps shouldn't be standing all in one spot since then a rocket will force a lot of movement. Just need to be clumped up enough so that the aoe heals are effective.
Assigning healers to specific groups is key here or you end up with a lot of cross healing.