sleepyfox

Long-time read, first time poster.

We've tried 25 and 10-man so far, but we've been having d/c and lag issues which have made things annoyingly difficult, but here's my initial impression:

Flame Leviathan: Very easy, took us three attempts on 25-man starting from complete scratch, I don't think any of our members have spent time on the PTR and half of the raid team are not listed by wow-heroes as 'ulduar-ready'. 1-shotted on 10-man. It took us a while to realise that you can get 4 people up on him on 25-man. Having 3 ranged DPS + 1 healer was fine for 25-man, the damage is light and easily healable, I suspect that 3 ranged + 1 ranged DPS off-healer like a elem shammy would be doable. We'll try with 1 or two towers up next time. 10-man we put up 1 ranged DPS and the elem shammy to DPS/OH, which worked a treat. Melee DPS are useless up there as they can't reposition. When all 4 defense turrets (60k health each on heroic) are killed he overloads, just have your guys ping the minimap and speak on vent so that the choppers can come pick you up and ferry you back to the demolishers, make sure the chopper drivers use their first aid ability too as you end up soaking damage fast if you're on the ground outside a vehicle.

Ignis trash: my god those molten giants remind me of MC, and they hit like trucks too! The golems are brute forceable but the flame wraiths are a pig, in the end we just MD'd one to our shammy who went ghost wolf and kited it way away whilst we DPS'd skull. The mob has a cast bar up for it's annoying flame whirlwind, so melee have a chance to distance themselves and take less damage. We spread out like on Archimonde so we could tell who it was going for, and had them run away, the whirlwind despawns after about 5 seconds.

The encounter itself seems rather harsh, we had a number of pot-gibs and had the same problems that others have experienced with scorches dropping off the adds and with being unable to position the add so that the add is in the scorch but the OT isn't, it seems the adds have a *miniscule* hit box. Next time we'll try burning him and just OTing the adds for the duration, as the amount of damage the OT takes whilst standing in the scorch is pretty nasty when combined with the adds (weak) melee and the flame jets, which seemed to be non-interruptible to us from pretty much everything that we could throw (counterspell, mind freeze, strangulate etc. etc.)

XT-002: We just spread out using DBM's 'range check' box which you can enable in the general options pane, and had little issue healing through all the damage, add control seems ok and we came near to downing him, I think only spending more time DPSing the heart and less time on the adds would see a kill. Ranged using bomb-bots to kill adds seems a nice finesse if you can time it right.

 

Mendoza

At least in 25 man gear getting the 10 man version into hard mode was pretty easy - we had to hold off at a few percent on the heart to prevent it. As to the dps requirements it really comes down to whether he has double damage phase on hard mode.

 

woo-haa

This is my understanding of the hard mode on FL. The towers start as 'inactive'. There are two NPCs in the start that start the encounter: Brann and Lore Keeper of Norgannon. Speaking to Brann will start the easy mode regardless whether you destroy the towers or not. Speaking with Lore Keeper of Norgannon will activate all the towers, in which destroying each tower will make the fight easier (like the drakes at Sartharion).

 

dnmorton

Flame Leviathan:

At the star of the instance there are 2 NPCs related to the towers: Brann Bronzebeard, and a Titan looking hologram. Talking to the hologram activates the towers, and talking to Brann starts the encounter. Hard mode is having *active* towers up.

Anyone tried Kologarn yet? We were having strange behavior related to the fist grab, and also the MTing. We generally have good DPS, and everyone was on the fist, but we still had every single grab resulting in a death to a 70k+ hit after 10seconds. The tooltip says damage should dislodge the people grabbed. Anyone have any insight? For a DPS measure, we got the achievement for speed on Razorscale an hour earlier, just barely.
On the MT issue, Kologarn was giving out an armor debuff that suggested a tank switch was a decent idea, especially since your 2nd tank has nothing to do on the fight otherwise. However, the debuff was coming very eratically. Some attempts he would tank for 2-3 minutes without getting it, other times he and I both had it all the time. Any other guilds have input? Did you single tank it and ignore the debuff, or switch to avoid it?

 

Jagiya

At risk of humiliating myself with embarassing imagery, this is what worked for us tonight:






We tried one variation which was even more successful, whereby the ranged split into two camps about 15 yards apart. If someone got a debuff in the left camp, they'd strafe left. If someone got a debuff in the right camp, they'd strafe right. All of the melee were positioned on XT's right leg, and if they got a debuff, they strafed to the left leg, allowing them to continue DPS without harming the raid.

It was really easy.


Our next major drama is Kolagarn. We're running with two tanks, three healers, five DPS. Two questions:
1) Our tanks don't really move at all during the entire fight. Yet, randomly, Kolagarn will breath the raid as though there were no-one in range. I'm aware that the hitbox for each arm is rather central, but our tanks insist on standing parallel to each arm. Should they stand closer to the center?

2) Do we need to swap tanks due to the Crushing Armor debuff on the Left Arm? In a half-dozen attempts, our tank (Druid) has rarely exceeded one stack of the debuff, so I'm not sure how critical it is. Again, any attempts to swap during a two-arm phase results in breath wipe.

Cool fight, but frustrating to see how easy it is to trigger a breath wipe. The trash was pretty painful too, but good to see there was only a little bit.

 

Kirth

The way we approached the arms was to have all the dps focus on the right (Grabbing) arm from the start, killing it will cause a decent amount of damage to Kolo (15% approx.). Since the dps was focused on the arm when someone got grabbed one heal to keep them up and they would be out shortly after. Our MT for kolo was reporting that timing his blocks and lucky dodge/parry were helping keep the debuff off but if it got to two stacks he would call in the off tank to taunt and that worked very well. I think he shield walled once when the OT was tanking the earth elemental adds and I pain suppressed during the last few % of the kill just in case.

Edit to the above - In 5-6 attempts we never had a breath wipe. We were running 2 tanks, 2 healers 6 dps(2 melee 4 ranged) and one of the melee was on Kolo's body the whole time with the main tank so I don't know if that helped with not getting breath wiped.

 

Lucinde

Some ballpark math -

The guy has 24 million health. I'm assuming for such burn strategy, you would use 2 tanks, 6 healers and 17 DPS. Let's also assume that you have more than excellent DPS and they can sustain a total of 75.000 DPS throughout the fight. Note that this is unrealistically high (4400 DPS per player) due to the flame jet bouncing and slag pots. Even under those conditions, you would need 320 seconds to kill him. That's 7 adds with the 40 second timer.

Ignis gets a damage buff stack for every add he spawns so he'd have 7 stacks of that for the last 40 seconds of the fight. 7 stacks means +105% damage, or rather - more than double damage. Even after the nerf, he can still hit tanks for around 22-23k so doubling it would one-shot any naxx geared tank you can field at the moment. Now, I'm sure you can think up something that would allow a tank to live, but flame jets and slag pot hitting for double is just gonna own you either way.

I don't believe with gear available he can be burned like that. Melting the adds is the whole point of the fight. They just need to change the hitbox of the adds or have the fire on the ground tick for less insane amounts. As is, it's almost impossible for a non-DK tank to properly kite these things into fire and keep them there for 20 seconds while not dying yourself. The pot-melee is just one more annoying bug, but it's hardly the thing that makes this fight feel so overtuned compared to FL / Razor / XT / Kolag and council.

 

thedopefishlives

We had the same issue with the fists. I think the timer is a little overtuned - it's supposed to release after 150k damage (normal) or 450k damage (heroic), but when we tried it with turning and burning the arm, we always failed. What we wound up doing was what the above poster said; we killed the arm to start with, then kept killing it every time it repopped.

As for the tank issue, we two-tanked it with myself and a feral. The feral would kitty DPS until I got a second stack of the debuff, at which time she would pop into bear form and take over from me. That way, if I never got more than one stack, I would continue tanking and she would add her DPS to the fight. It worked very well, but required good communication between tanks.

For the poster above having issues with breath wipes, we had both our tanks front and center, standing almost on top of each other, Nalorakk-style. We rarely even had to move, even to turn and attack the arm. Never got a breath once.

 

Nakari

We too had some problems with Kologarn, he seemed to kill people in his right hand with ~70k from Squeezed Lifeless regardless of how much damage was done to the arm, even with alle DPS focussing the right arm from the start (probably bugged?). What we finally did was just burning Kologarn down and letting one of the 3 grabbed players die, as the remaining two are freed as soon as the poor guy who's called out not to be healed dies. I'm sure he's not supposed to be killed that way, but hey, we got Heroic: With Open Arms out of it

 

Harmankaya

Wondering about the mechanics of his arm (right arm) aswell. He will release instantly if one of the three dies, and sometimes we could just heal through it while the dps burned on the arm (without killing it). Most of the time, however, we would just keep them alive long enough to get Squeezed Lifeless and they all died.

We ended up burning the right arm whenever it was up, and it sort of worked.
I can't help but to think something is wrong with the ruleset of when he's supposed to release them, but we'll see.

 

Copernicus

On our 25-man, we had to do a tank-swap. On the 10-man, the druid was able to solo-tank it mostly. You still need an OT to grab Rubble.

On our 25-man, we had a person die after the arm was killed. At the time, we guessed it was because the squeezed debuff stopped recording damage. But later on, in our 10-man, killing the arm had the person be tossed out of it.

------------------

We had some issues with Snaplashers on Freya25. We tried not-tanking it, but then it would go on a rampage at some point. We tried tanking it, but then it would catch up with our OT and kill them (even after stunning the add and Intervening etc). We eventually just brute-forced it by soulstoning a tank and just having them die a horrible costly death. But any general advice on how to tank/kite those adds?

 

• Snowy

Guys, remember this thread isn't intended to be a blog. Have a point to your posts -- you should either be asking a reasonable question, or answering one. None of this "We killed 7 bosses tonight and here are my thoughts on each one." We don't care. We really don't. I was lenient with warnings, but I won't anymore after this.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

sleepyfox

I was watching a video of Drama/Kolgath vs. Ignis as linked on the wowwiki site when I wrote that. Serves me right for not investigating properly, that was on the PTR before they put in the damage buff stacking, so that is not a viable strategy now.

 

Rhaegal

We encountered unexpected behavior from 10 man FL last night, and I'm not sure if it's intended or not. It was my understanding that he was supposed to only bounce between Siege Engines (so long as there were two alive, obviously). However, almost every attempt his initial aggro was always on a Destroyer, and he'd bounce between that Destroyer and one of the other Siege Engines for the whole run. We tried several different methods of aggroing him (including both siege engines plodding in together ahead of everyone else and shooting him), but even when his initial aggro was on a Siege Engine, his alternate target would still be a Destroyer. Is this intended? On 10 man, does he randomly choose between the Siege Engines and Destroyers, since there's only two Siege Engines available?

(We had quite a few total attempts, partially because we started practicing him with less than 10 people to get a feel for the fight while waiting on some raiders to get home from work. There was no attempt out of maybe 6-8 where he would properly only aggro on the two Siege Engines.)

[edit] Thanks for the responses. I'll make sure the people driving our Destroyers are comfortable kiting on future nights, then, which wasn't the case this time, and part of our problem.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Melthu

Demolishers are a valid target for his focus just like Siege Engines in both 10 and 25 mans. This was added in later PTR builds and may not be mentioned in the strat sites.

Edit: Here's the blue post - World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Current Ulduar Issues Update (Thursday Aft.)

 

RootBreaker

Yes, blizzard has confirmed that flame leviathan is supposed to be able to chase both non-bike vehicles. IIRC, he was only chasing siege engines exclusively the first night he was up on PTR.

 

Skulli

Anyone else noticed a bug in p4 of the Mimiron Encounter where the middle unit is doing is "dark glare" in random directions and wiping the raid in seconds?
Pretty much all attempts in p4 fail for us cause of that thing. Is it just a bug or is it avoidable?

 

SkotchDS

From what I can tell from our attempts, if his original target dies from dark glare, he will randomly target someone else and spray them with dark glare without warning. Not sure if its intended.

 

◊ Sparty

Sorry, I should have clarified, that was from 10man. The heroic versions we killed dropped their 'correct' tokens as in the previous post.

 

Hungtar

During the Auriaya fight, we had her Sanctum Sentries respawn. Not sure what caused that, but it might have had something to with tanking Auriaya on stairs. Has anyone else expierienced this? It's not supposed to happen, is it?

e: typo

 

Jezz

We are currently having real problems with Thorim (25). We have killed pretty much everything so far in about a solid hour of tries, we reached Thorim and can't seem to make any sort of progress on it. We have tried an array of different tactics including:

3 DPS, 1 Tank, 2 Healers in the gauntlet
4 DPS, 1 Tank, 2 healers
5 DPS, 1 tank, 2 healers

Almost all the DPS in the gauntlet, healers and tanks upstairs.

Mind controlling, sheeping, fearing upstairs. Different balances of healers etc. etc.

None of these seem to get us anywhere as the arena wipes between engaging the first mini-boss and engaging the second mini-boss and at best when we manage to get to the 2nd, the arena has a good few dead. The times we get near the 2nd mini boss seem to be luck.

It almost seems to be so hard that we are missing a vital part of the fight, everything else has been challenging but we made clear progress and start improving and eventually get a kill. At the moment we are seeing nothing improving no matter how many times we attempt it, nor what different tactics we use.

All tactics/guides we have found seem to put very little emphasis on balancing the raid and I don't know whether or not this these are referring to the PTR - it would make sense to us if they were. Anyway, just looking for any advice to help us with this encounter.


Edit: Re-read the Ulduar guidelines, feel free to delete this message.

 

jazka

This was a problem on our attempts aswell, leading to wipes and frustration, and we decided to call it a night. Hoping for a hotfix.

 

Grunge

Uh, from what I gathered, if anyone dies to Dark Glare he does a 360 spray and kills most of the raid.
This seems intended behavior to me since you really shouldn't die to Dark Glare.

It's part of what makes Mimiron in my mind the most fun fight.

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

jazka

I very much doubt that it's intended,as the glare was going all around the place, pretty much sweeping clear our whole raid in a matter of seconds, spread along the room.

For clarification, this is Phase 4 Mimiron, normal difficulty.

E: And the original target definately did not die to it.

 

Grunge

Are you certain no one died to Dark Glare before he started spinning?
Since I'm pretty sure that anyone dieing to Dark Glare in P4 resulted in 360-spin-off-death for us in heroic mode.

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.