◊ arison

Shadow Priests with innate 15% damage reduction (spell and physical) in shadow form are good soakers. Hunters who spec for 4% damage reduction are decent since they like to be at range anyway. Also, Flask of Lesser Resistance plus a nature resist totem plus a head and cloak enchant guarantee 20% reduction in nature damage, so it very likely is worthwhile for soakers to have this as the dps loss should be minimal (just enchant previous gear, etc).

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

Aside from our first kill (where we had 2 hunters), I've been the (sole) soaker, and I haven't seen it hit melee either. It can hit a tank who moved out to explode, which caused a wipe for us once.

A strong ranged DPS as soaker means you can give them Overwhelming Power (by being highest on aggro at a tank death) and have the other tank taunt off before the DPS dies. Our normal strategy is Runemaster-->Stormcaller-->Steelbreaker, with 2 tanks and 3 healers. It's slower than alternatives (3 healers and we don't always have MS), but it's reliable and repeatable.

 

krilz

Okay, so my guild has had a fair success at hard modes in 10-man. We've downed every hard mode up to Thorim and can do it relatively easy now. But Freya+3 is like running head in against a brick wall. The adds has so much HP and the fact that you have kill Lifebinders and Iron Roots at the same time just make it seem impossible. The hardest part for some reason was the 3 adds that have go down simultanously. We don't have a really good strategy here. The Ancient Conservator is easy and if we just shape up we can manage the lashers fairly well with only 2 or 3 left when the next adds pop. Our healers last time was a shaman, priest and druid and I'm wondering if the shaman is a liability here. Are retri paladins really necessary during the encounter? Every tip is of great help.

 

Tavik

The problem is that you're running with 3 healers. Unless you have AMAZING dps, you need to do it with 2 healers. We do it with a disc priest (myself) and a rDruid. I keep shields on everyone he keeps HoTs on everyone, and we both heal spike damage. The only fights you need 3 healers for is algalon, and you only really need 1 healer for hodir. I hope this helps.

 

TimWischmeier

I have to disagree with you. We do Freya+3 with 3 healers, though I must admit that we use Bloodlust to catch up if we lag behind on an add phase. So this is a typical "do what works for your raid" - fight. For us, we failed hard when using 2 healers only, because not everyone in our raid can avoid damage enough.

 

Gofa

Oh I have to strongly disagree with going 2 healer. Everytime we have done the fight we used 3 healer and dps has never been a problem for us. Yes, we have 25man gear... but dps isn't as bad as you make it in 10man. We're constantly running into 15+ seconds left on the timer using 3 healer.
If you have trouble with the 3 elementals, put 1 range on the snaplasher to get it stunned as soon as possible (tank should tank it at the beginning and move away from it when it gets more debuff) and make at least sure that every charge of the waterelemental gets interrupted. Try to place the 3 adds in a way that you can hit them with ae. Roots don't have much hp, just switch to them and kill them - same goes for the healing tree. 1 ranged should be enough to kill it.

Freya is one of the fights where you have to get used to it. There are many elements in this fight but as soon as you got yourself an overview over the fight this fight becomes more and more manageable. Maybe that's why your dps was lacking, just give your raid some more tries and I'm 100% positive that dps will increase by a lot just because everyone got into this fight.

 

Tavik

Maybe our raid comp just has slow-to-maximize dps. We usually run with 2 sPriests and 2 locks, and dont have heroism most of the time. The combination of 4 casters building up their DoT rotations and not having access to heroism probably leads to us needing to do the fight with 2 healers. Also, we are strictly a 10 man guild. Any 226 items we have are from our hard mode kills, craftables, or from vault or a pug 25.

We're working on firefighter now and trying to work with the fire during phase 3. With all the kiting going on, we tend to get into a cluster f**k by the 3-4th magnetic core and dont have very much room to transition into phase 4. How do you guys work with the fire during phase 3?

 

RootBreaker

You're going to have a lot of trouble finishing the fight before the room explodes if its taking you more than 2 magnetic cores to finish phase 3. The ranged DPS can and should stay on the head after the first drop. Stay near the edge of the room, moving the boss to a clear area to drop it when you're going to have a core soon. Stay far enough away from the fire not to get hit by emergency bots, but not so far away that fire spawning on you will expand the area covered by the fire too much. Don't kill the emergency bots too quickly or you won't get enough fire being put out.

 

Tbagassassin

Several tips that helped us farm 3elder freya in 10s:

Raid Makeup:

Prot Warr
Arms Warr
Frost DK
Prot Pal
Ret Pal
Holy Pal
Resto Shaman (Me)
Disc Priest
Mage
Boomkin

1) For the roots we have the arms warrior charge and kill the people who get rooted ASAP, prioritizing the healers of course. Usually other melee can DPS themselves out. The boomkin also helps. They both have a macro /tar strengthened iron roots (need confirmation) so they can quickly DPS people out when it happens.

2) Make sure all your healers know to stop casting (or use instant casts) when Ground tremor happens or else they get locked out for several seconds.

3) For the 3pack: Our DK locks down the Water spirit by interrupting when its about to charge and just auto attacks it to control its health pool. This prevents people from getting knocked all over the place. The rest of the DPS burns the snap lasher to 50%, then switch to the storm lasher to ~50% (this allows the stacking dmg buffs to fall off of the Snap Lasher). We then call for AE. The DK would just then open up on the Water spirit and solo it since it has very little health. Works every time for us.

4) For the Detonating Lashers, we collapse under freya and AE until they are all ~25% health. From there we spread out and Assist train them one at a time so we dont get an overwhelming multi explosion. Also DPS must pause when Ground Tremor is happening and wait for the healers top everyone off before resuming. Ground Tremor damage + LAsher explosion can kill several people. Also, Fire aura/Totem mitigates the detonation damage.

Otherwise we have both a ret pally and I play the resto shaman. We are far from liabilities. I just make sure that I'm not casting when Ground Tremor hits (DBM has an announcement) and chain heal away! Otherwise make sure people arent standing in the beams and it should be ezepix!

 

• Allara

On Freya+3 (10 man), as a hunter and the raid leader, I found this macro to be quite helpful. With it, I was always able to stomp out the roots and nearly solo the trees every time. Melee shouldn't waste their time on these unless they're very close.

 

Rezdan

Our raid also goes with 3 healers for Freya+3. We have 1-2 Ranged DPS equiped with a macro nearly identical to the one posted by Allara to handle both Trees and Roots. We found the key to the 3 Add Group was to split the DPS between the Water and Storm spirits to ensure they don't accidently get burned too quickly. Ranged DPS would be the ones on the charging Water spirit to ensure efficient dps. We found having our Snaplasher tank actually kite the mob in addition to stunning when it's stacks get high to help significantly all around.

Even with 3 healers, we don't find ourselves up against the Enrage timer - allowing us to use Heroism for a critical wave if needed.

 

mhenrique85

I Have some tips for you.
We are a 10 man strict guild too, and it ill probably help you.


We do the fight with just 2 healers, but its possible to do 3, no problem, we already 8 man it with 2 healers, two less dps.

1o - Use just 1 tank. You dont need 2 tanks on freya. Many people dont know that.

How to use 1 tank.

Tree Wave: Freya Tank will tank it, our tank pop CDs at this wave becouse both Freya + Tree hit hard on tank and depending of the postion of the healers and mushroons + Static Shock people near the healers, it might be a problem.
Probably with 3 healers, you guys dont need to do it.
We also put simbols on healers heads to ranged dps avoid healers mushroons.


3-lashers wave:

- Storm Lasher: we put our feral dps to tank him on bear form, its the only time in the fight the we use a "second tank". It can be tanked by a DK dps in frost presence too. If you dont have one, your freya´s tank can tank it ezly, the ony problem is that he will need to generate threat on 2 adds, but both of them dont hit hard. Down him to 15%.

- water spirit: will be tanked by freya´s tank. his wave can now be interrupted, so put a dps on him to help the tank interrupt. Will be the 2nd to down to 15%.

- Snaplasher: Here is the trick, put a hunter to kite him, it dont need to be tanked on 10 man. when the snaplasher is hited he gains a buff to hit harder, but he´s movement speed is reduced, when he reaches 20+ stacks, he will be imobilized, and stay there looking to your hunter, doing nothing, your hunter now just need to make sure the debuff dont drop, so he needs to keep hiting the mob. Hunter is the best class to do it becouse he have a pet that helps to keep the debuff up and is the best kiter, we never tried, but probably a warlock can do it. It ill be the last to dps, and first to die, your melee can dps him normaly, even imboilized, he will not hit the closet ppl on him, he ill keep looking the hunter, doing nothing.

kill the other 2, gg.

detonating slashers wave: this wave its all about dps control. we do that on the hardest mode, basic strat, join on the freya´s foot, AOE until low life, spread out and kill one by one. You have time, dont need to rush this wave, if the raid´s life is too low, your dps need to stop and your healers need to heal the raid full fast.

Some guilds do it another way,
detonating slashers addendum video
YouTube - TankSpot's Guide to Freya (Detonating Lashers Addendum)

phase 2 ia a joke.


Another tips:

- Healers need to stop casting on earthquakes, 8 seconds silence = =(.

- First, make your healers use grid if they dont =D, second, make them put the iron roots debuff on grid, it makes a LOT eazir to heal who is with the debuff. DPS can brake their own roots.

- make sure your tank stay near your healers range in tree wave.

- remember on the 5th and meanly on the 6th wave, you have all time in the world, since the 6th is the last one, your dps need to pay atention and dont kill people on the detonating slasher wave.

- make sure your snaplasher kiter dont stay away from the healers range.

- when the waves spawn, meanly the 3 slasher wave, DONT STAY NEAR FREYA, they spawn on hear foot, and you will be gibbed.


Its not a hard fight, and probably is the easiest keeper hard mode once you learn it.

 

mhenrique85

KILL Emergency Fire Bots, a hunter is the best class to do it, try to keep moving SLOWLY in circle, it wll make the fire stacks on the same place, the fires in the room have a cap, 50 fires, once its reached, no more fire will spawn, and you will have a quarter of the room free from fire in the beginning of phase 4. Be carefull with frost bombs in phase 4.

 

Kaulask

Is there a condition other than enrage that will cause Algalon to cast Big Bang in Phase Two? (under 20%).

Over three attempts, and then on our kill, he would transition to Phase 2 (causing Black Holes and Constellations to despawn), and then cast Big Bang shortly thereafter. The first attempt, Big Bang was cast immediately following the "Behold the tools of creation!" emote. On subsequent attempts it was cast between 5-10%, necessitating an unexpected tank swap.

I have not seen this occur in any video, and some guides state that Algalon in fact loses this ability in Phase Two until berserk.

 

Gofa

Well, he casts big bang every 90seconds. It depends on your dps if you see the 3rd big bang in 10man before or after p2.

 

Valsh

I don't think he loses the ability to cast it at all, it just seems that way due to the nature of the fight. His enrage isn't the raid wiper in most cases, it's the fourth big bang which is still based on a timer.

 

Clandestine

Big Bang is cast every 90 seconds, independent of whether he's above or below 20% HP.

 

Frota

Algalon do not use Big Bang below 20% HP. Period. Search before post and read the forum rules. Post wrong information only confuses the others members of the community.

It was posted and it is a common used strategy try to DPS him below 20% before the third big bang.

"When Algalon's health reaches 20%, he will enter Phase 2. No more Collapsing Stars or Living Constellations will spawn, and he will stop casting Big Bang. In place of those, four Black Holes will appear and they will periodically spawn Dark Matters. From this point on, the fight becomes a DPS race, as Algalon will continue Phase Punching your tanks, and you might get overwhelmed by adds or too much tank damage."
Algalon the Observer - NPC - World of Warcraft

 

• Snowy

Wrong.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Xequecal

Does anyone know a reliable way to position Steelbreaker so that the melee can stand in the Rune of Power and attack him but he himself isn't in it? Several nights of this and I still can't get it more than half the time. I take 1 step back and look for the debuff, then repeat if it's still there. Half the time that takes him too far and the melee can't reach. I tried strafing alone the side of the rune and positioning him that way but half the time this just gets me gibbed due to the Runemaster dying and then getting one shot.

 

Jagiya

Baby Spice allows you to position Steelbreaker next to a Rune of Power with significant ease. I'm not entirely sure it's possible to melee him safely otherwise.

 

Zurai

It is, you just have to be careful. His hit box is huge, but that works against him just as easily as it works for him.

 

Orixa

A guildmate and I put together this macro for the Freya +3 fight that should be of great use to any guild currently working on the encounter. It will target and attack only alive mobs prioritising Eonar's Gift > Strengthened Iron Roots > (one of the 3 adds - see below) > Ancient Conservator > Freya.

/cleartarget
/target Eonar's Gift
/target [noexists][dead] Strengthened Iron Roots
/target [noexists][dead] XXXXXX (see below)
/target [noexists][dead] Ancient Conservator
/target [noexists][dead] Freya
/petattack
/cast <ATTACK>


Edit the XXXXXX and include the name of the mob, assuming you have been designated one, and edit the final line as appropriate to your class/spec. The mob names are:

Ancient Water Spirit
Snaplasher
Storm Lasher

You may want to change some lines of this macro around to suit your guild's approach to the fight, but hopefully it will be of help in getting things like the Roots and Eonar's Gift disposed of quickly!

 

Cranberry

I haven't done Ulduar yet this week, but rumor on the forums has it Vezax and his hardmode were quite massively nerfed (1/3 of the HP off both Vezax and the Animus) - can anyone confirm this?

 

Xequecal

Vezax and the Animus were nerfed down to 22m/8m HP respectively.

Also be careful on Iron Council. Steelbreaker's Overwhelming Power debuff now lasts 35 seconds, but you explode when there's 5 seconds left on it, not when it runs out.