krilz

OK, so we tried out FL+4 last night on 10-man and decided to put it on hold after 2 hours of wiping with results like 4%, 10%, 13% and nearby. The fight seems so RNG to me that I wonder if our strategies are even good. We tried out different stuff such as:

- Having 2 siege (with a passenger each) 2 choppers, 2 demolishers (a passenger each) and let one demolisher shoot up it's passenger and let him shoot down the turrets. The other demolisher just stacks Pyrite all through the fight.
- Having 2 siege (with a passenger each) 1 chopper (with a passenger), 2 demolishers (a passenger each) and there we have a rotation on one of the demolishers through the chopper so when gets launched, the chopper passenger hops on it and starts stacking Pyrite together with the other one.

The biggest problem with the fight is that he seems to target demolishers WAY to often, almost every other time which makes it hard to do any real damage. Does any of the above methods have any real special differences (1 chopper extra vs one pyrite stacking demolisher) or is it all RNG?

 

BeeLz

We downed him within 10 tries with using only 1 chopper last week. We do however have one in the launcher and one in the passenger seat when the fight starts, the one in the launcher gets launched asap and when the first shutout is over, the passenger jumps in the launcher and the guy who took down the turrets jumps in the passenger seat. ( This requires some timing because getting in the launcher early could result in the loss of a pyrite stack and getting launched during shutout makes FL not pick you up )
While being chased as a demolisher sucks it's not impossible to keep your pyrite stack going, the passenger should make sure the pyrite never drops below 25 so he can use the speedboost when needed, tell you siege gunners to shoot pyrite down near the demos kiting path and it should be ok. With pyrite barrels staying 3 mins instead of 1 make sure you shoot down enough barrels at the start of the fight.

3 shutouts should be enough to down him, the turrets go down rather fast so the kiting shouldn't be that big of a problem if the demolishers stay at max range.

 

Rhaegal

Just wanted to strongly second this. It's an issue I've noticed with a lot of people when driving demolishers, especially if they have siege engine experience prior to piloting a demo. There's no reason that I know of for demolishers to be getting up in FL's face, but people do it anyway. I often had to stress this early on in learning this fight, but once the message got through people's heads, we stopping having choppers outlasting demolishers. =P I'm not sure if it's a natural affinity for being up close and personal with the boss, or just a matter of tunnel-visioning the best path to pick up pyrite until the warnings shows up that they're being followed, but it's an easy fix.

Alternatively, if you're having a problem with your chopper dying early enough that the person killing turrets is having a problem getting back to the demolisher, I recommend using a mage or warlock. Aside from the crazy burst a good FFB mage can dish out on the turrets, the room is flat so Blink actually works when you want it to, and Ice Block will save you a few seconds. A warlock can just put a circle in a pre-determined location before the fight and let the demo driver know where it is. This obviously isn't as flexible, though, and runs the risk of FL getting shut down near the circle.

(Disclaimer: we just started building up to this last week and have only done two towers, but using a one-chopper strategy where a single demolisher rotates two ranged DPS passengers was absurdly easy. We have a mage who usually finds his demo himself, and the chopper runs around bored half the time.)

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Ja7us

Has anyone done any kind of studying about the interactions between various boss abilities in Ulduar and dampen / amplify magic - whether these abilities are affected at all by dampen/amplify, and to what extent?

Some abilities that it would be useful to know the interactions of:

Saronite Animus' shadow aura (does dampen reduce the damage done? By how much? Does it apply before or after the stack multiplier?)

Hodir's Frozen Blows

Mimiron's Rapid Burst / Hand Pulse / Heat Wave

Steelbreaker's Lightning aura / secondary target nuke

Life Sparks' aura

Thorim's Chain Lightning

Freya's Sunbeams / lasher explosions

Many of these are situations where dampen might be useful to prevent or reduce the chance of death if it works, and where amplify would be a significant raid buff if the increase in damage does not apply. We've been experimenting with them off and on, but it's quite tough to empirically test some of these abilities while in the throes of a full-on attempt. Typically we just amplify the tanks and be done with it, but depending on how the various abilities interact there could end up being a big swing in power with proper usage.

 

MatsT

Almost all bosses seem completely unaffected by dampen/amplify. Maybe dampen only reduces the casters spellpower and boss abilities use static dmg values. This means that in general you should use amplify on the entire raid, preferably talented. This is the equivalent of giving all healers 380 spellpower, a significant buff. There have been a few exceptions to this where boss damage is actually affected, but those are quite few and it can be argued whether amplify is still better in these fights.

 

Arkas

Thorim question -

How are you guys positioning your melee in phase 2? I've told ours to form a sort of triangle, but it still seems no matter what we do they get gibbed ridiculously hard. Any tips?

 

Lucinde

We do exactly what you said there.

The melee is forming three stacks (one stack being the tanks) and position in the shape a triangle around Thorim. The groups can sit out of chain lightning range of eachother and still hit the boss. On normal mode I'm pretty sure you can stack 4 melee without the risk of one dying to a chain lightning before Thorim is dead, but on hardmode you're limited to stacks of 3. It puts an artificial limit on how many melee you can realistically take, but there's nothing you can do about it unless you want to have your melee's survival depend on the RNG.

What I noticed sometimes is a ranged DPS venturing too close to the melee groups while avoiding a lightning charge (or a blizzard when doing hardmode), and then get zapped by chain lightning, Naturally, the CL will bounce to your melee stack and gib one. Have your raid get some sort of range frame (I personally like the one that's built into DBM) and watch that like a hawk. The priorities should be:

1) Don't stand in the lightning charge (and blizzard)
2) Make sure no more than 2 people are in your "chain lightning range"
3) Do DPS

The DPS requirements on Thorim, even on hardmode, are really not that high. It's when you lose players due to them tunneling DPS instead of avoiding the encounter's hazards that makes it look like you need more DPS.

 

Exemplar

Most buffs are on the boss (Thorim, Steelbreaker-last when tanks die, Freya with trees up, etc). This means damage multiplied before it hits your toon. In these cases I would suspect "(Damage * Modifier) - Dampen" to occur.

The Animus aura is a very good question, however, as that's a debuff on you. "(Damage - Dampen) * Modifier" could be a significant reduction.

I'd love to see results of someone testing on Animus.

Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."

 

Vazu

If you're talking 25m..

Split your ranged & healers into groups of 3 people. Have each group stand 10yds away from the closest melee but no further. You want minimum distance. Spread out 10yds apart AROUND Thorim in a circle. You'll have something like 5-6 groups surrounding him. The goal is that groups should be outside of Blizzard range but not close enough to chain melee or anyone standing nearby. Then you literally just stand there and DPS. If you get a charge, you just run directly behind you and THEN to the left or right to avoid it. The movement has to be precise. If a group runs through another group of 3 people and a chain lands, someone is going to die. Make sure your shadow Priest(s) or someone is mass dispelling FAST if Sif novas a group with a charge heading their way. Extra heals to groups which are forced to run into a Blizzard to avoid charges. Lastly, as you learn the fight, make sure Thorim is always centered in the room. This is important because some groups shouldn't need to move for charges. Ideally only one group of 3 people should ever have to move for each charge. The southern-most group near the entrance has to move the most (3 different charges force that group to move), so don't put healers there.

Edit: As a side note, melee are a huge liability here. Bring as few as you can get away with. Basically if you have to bring melee, just make sure no more than 3 of them ever get hit with chain lightning. It doesn't matter how you set it up. Just make sure your boss mod helper (the range checker) doesn't show any more than 2 people w/in 10yds of each melee.

That's about it.

 

Ravage

as the title says, i would like opinions

im asking about the talent Improved Blizzard

all my research says it doesnt, but i would appreciate a confirmation, thanks

 

◊ Talanik

My guild is going to be starting on Thorim hard mode this week (25 man). We got FL, XT, and Hodir hard modes last week and are going for Thorim/IC this week as well as working our way up on Freya/Yogg.

There is a pretty big disagreement on whether we should use a MCing priest to MC the warbringers. Some people that are against it are saying its only an added hassle on the healers, and if it breaks it could one shot the priest. Can anyone run through a few pro/cons of using the MC, and how advisable it is for learning it?

 

Zaniel

It's 20% haste for your entire raid. It's also an easily healable person (your MCer) if they're in the proper frost resist gear. There really aren't any drawbacks, except needing the occasional taunt.

 

◊ alinna

I usually MC this fight as shadow and I have never been one-shot by the mob. A shadow priest wearing frost resist gear should be able to take 2 hits from the warbringer without dying, and a lot of the time, if Sif has just cast frostbolt volley, the warbringer will be affected by the slow, giving the priest plenty of time to recast mind control before the warbringer gets anywhere close to the priest. Alternatively, break the MC with fade if you are really worried, and it will not even go to the priest until fade wears off.

Also, you really don't lose much in DPS if a priest is mind controlling, as the warbringer can easily do 4k DPS on Thorim besides bringing the 20% haste buff.

 

Tyrian

Pro's:
- You give the entire raid 20% haste
- Your shadow priest mindcontrols a mob that itself can do ~5-6k dps (probably more than the shadow priest would have)
- The mind controlling shadow priest wears full Frost Resist and stands in the safe spot. They are very unlikely to die.
- Mind control can never resist if you're using the correct Glyth

Con's:
- Misery might not be up, you might be relying on another spriest to put it up or a moonkin with improved fairie fire
- Replenishment might not be up (unlikely, since one hunter/frost mage/ret pally could apply it - and most raids will have at least one of them)
- Mind Control will break occasionally, and your OT (who does nothing much in P2 anyway) will need to grab the NPC before it attacks the priest.

There is not really anything to disagree about here. If you have a priest able to Mind Control, do it. I'd venture so far as to say you'd be silly not to be doing it. The opportunity to get +20% on the raid with such relative ease should not be passed up.

The only time i'd recommend you consider not mind controlling, is if your only priest in the raid was Holy (and your only good raid healer). Or if you had no Holy Paladins and you only had a Disc priest available to heal the MT.

 

Torrential

We used 2 priests MCing for our first hard mode kill. The aura stacks and makes very noticeable difference in your raid DPS. Can't recommend it enough provided you've got the +3% hit from elsewhere.

 

dysent

2 MCers in capped FrR gear with maxed hit.

This is how we did it for our first kill and I'll swear by it. With two haste buffs the adds also do more than 4k dps (more like 5k iirc) and the difference to dps and healing is massive.

Stand the two MCers right under center of thorims platform. No movement needed by them ever. Easier to heal than anyone else in the raid, and they really don't even need help on MCs is hit capped and fast at casting.

It's pure upside.

 

Strategia

Regarding the MC'd Warbringers:

Do you have the priests continually mind control throughout p1 as well? We've tried to have them MC but it just seems like when the mob breaks on the 2nd or 3rd time it's hard to realize it fast enough before the priest gets killed.

 

Torrential

They typically wait until the hallway team reports they're working on the 2nd mini boss. Then they (the spriests) find a recent warbringer and mark them (so dps know to not kill them) then MC shortly after. They had tried to MC the entire P1 but it wasn't working out for them. I'm not 100% on the reasons but as a raid leader I didn't really care to argue about it. They got the MCs working for P2 where it matters, P1 isn't really a big deal with or without the MC.

 

Rhaegal

I'm guessing the reason it wasn't working very well was partially aggro based. I haven't seen this widely posted about around here, but we discovered (at least on 10 man, maybe it's not true on 25, but this would be an odd thing to change between difficulties) that the adds that jump into the arena aggro on the person closest to Thorim's platform. They run to that person until either they hit him/her, or until someone else hits them, ignoring (maybe just delaying) all healing threat, etc. If the MCing priests set up in the safe spot under Thorim's platform, all incoming adds will run directly at them.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

KamPa

During Phase 1, you can get Pummeled by smaller Iron Dwarves, which interrupts the MC. Also, Thorim might decide to stun you with his hammer. Pummel can be avoided by standing a bit further, but then you can get zapped by lightnings. Hammer is completely random and will mess you up.
It's not really worth the risk of getting killed by Warbringer when you least expect it.

 

Torrential

I see people mentioning the 'people under Thorim get aggro' claim over and over. I've never seen it to be true.

As for where to stand, the safe spot under Thorim is very small, and if in P2 Thorim is not positioned perfectly the safe spot won't be so safe. The safe zone by the stairs to the hallway is much better for the shadow priests as it can be safe even if Thorim moves a bit. The are under the platform is better for healers as it lets them move very little but at least they're playing their own character so they can move.

 

Rhaegal

Maybe it's different on 25? I know on 10, I can mouse over mobs that just landed, and they're targeting our OT every time. I can heal my face off before he touches them, but they always completely ignore me and keep running for him until they get to the pile of melee and either he hits them or somebody else grabs their attention with a WW or Volley or something.

The attempt we figured it out was extremely apparent. We weren't having a problem with the arena, but mobs were still running around, I was having to run through the middle a lot to let our OT swipe a mob off of me, etc. Controlled chaos, basically. Then our OT said on vent, "Hold on, let me try something." From that point on, no one other than him ever had aggro from anything. When I asked him after the fight what he changed, and it was just his positioning relative to the rest of the raid, and it made a huge difference.

Anecdotal, sure, but I can confidently say that when we don't do that, it's chaos, and when we do, it feels like fighting Noth all over again--stand still and maybe heal between yawns.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

ildon

The reason MC'ing is problematic if not just not worth doing during phase 1 is the random stuns from Thorim's hammer and getting charged by the champions. Breaks the channel and then you can't even start re-casting until the stun is over meaning the warbringer is already beating on you. Maybe I just had bad luck but it really does not seem worth the hassle until the hallway group is done.

 

obbity

In 25 as well, I can confirm, the mobs will target a player around the stage area, if not under the stage perhaps between the stage and the circle in the middle of the room. It appears to work the same in 10 and 25 man. I've seen just about every class (from healer to enhancement shaman to death knight) be the first target purely based on positioning and not what they were doing at the time.

EDIT: It certainly is possible to pull aggro, but the first target is based off position.

 

Evanaescent

We tried a bunch of different things (hex, sheep, etc), but we found from personal experience that since the very first mob to spawn is always a warbringer, that the easiest way to take care of the MC was to just have our ret paladin taunt, drag his ass to the corner, and keep him there with repentance.

No hassle with perma-MC during phase 1, and you aren't scrambling at the end of the phase. It really is your least worry with the fight but if you're struggling with it I can't imagine there being a simpler solution.