ash2ash

Me and my friends are having a blast in ulduar-10 - more so than 25 actually, but I have some nagging concerns.

Is any guild legitimately doing 10 man ulduar in 10 man naxx gear? I have gone in with a group full of people in mostly 25 man gear and am finding that the encounters fairly punishing even at our gear level. Aside from some bugs, there are several abilities that bosses have that I don't think any 10 man geared tank/healer could survive through.

Also, I think we have disenchanted about every single non-tier piece we have come across thus far - some of the itemization is just downright terrible - I don't see how blizzard's progression idea of 10 man naxx -> 10 man ulduar -> 10 man hard mode could possibly be correctly tuned.

 

Ared

It's buggy. This was an issue on the PTR where some vapor pools just wouldn't work. At first we thought it might be linked to vapors being killed on the patch left after shadow crash but we managed to establish that this wasn't the case. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon, as a bugged cloud can easily cause a wipe.

 

Muggins

My guild is pretty much a 10 man only guild with a spattering of some people in bits and pieces of 25 man gear that they've pugged when bored, but we focus our guild raids on 10 man in mostly 10 man gear. We've been into Ulduar twice this week and plan on going in again tonight, so far Flame Leviathan, Deconstructor, Razorscale are dead and we've had sounding attempts on Ignis, Council and Kologarn who should be going down tonight. The only fight so far that seemed a bit of a brick wall was Ignis, but frankly we didn't even have close to the right group setup for it and this was before he was hotfixed so hopefully he won't be quite so punishing tonight. The other fights have been tightly tuned and challenging(FL excluded), but not overly so. In fact we're having a blast and most agree that the difficulty level is just about right so far, whether that will change when we get past Kologarn and start looking towards Mimiron, Thorim & Co we'll have to see.

Regarding the large choice of watchers available after Kologarn turns to rubble, is anyone finding a best order to attempt the bosses in regarding their difficulty levels? I was thinking Hodir > Auriya > Freya > Thorim > Mimiron was probably the best bet but if anyone has any input that would save some heartache down the road i'd appreciate it.

 

vorda

I'd do auriya before everything else simply because of the design (she patrols on the route you need to take to get to the other watchers).

On 10 man, she's quite a bit easier than 25 as well. The pull (which is 90% of the fight -and trivial once you figured it out-) is much less complex.

Freya is probably easier than every other watcher out of my experience as well.

 

Vardisk

My girlfriend runs a 10 man guild. They're in 90% 10 man gear and like 10% 25 man gear from pugs. Raiding just one day so far this week, they've 9 manned FL, Razor, XTS and almost killed Kologarn after a couple attempts before raid was over. I'd say it's tuned pretty well for 10 man guilds, excited to see how they do their next two raids before reset.

 

Motrin

What setup are you guys using for 10 man Iron Council? We got pretty close but hit the enrage timer with about 500K life left on Brundir using 3 tanks/3 healers. We're 25 man geared and no one is a DPS slouch, so it just seemed like we were doing something wrong. Can a single tank take 2 of them? Or possibly a DPSer heal one of the tanks until we get Steelbreaker down?

We also thought the Rune of Death was pretty tough, as its almost instant death if you delay moving in the slightest. Would DPSing the bosses until low health, then finishing off all three quickly (in order to minimize time with the extra abilities) be a viable strat?

 

Jebraltar

Every time you kill one, the others heal to full.

A single tank can easily tank Stormcaller and Runemaster, and that's probably the best way to do the fight.

Is there something I'm missing about tank damage in Mimiron phase 1? We tried it on ten-man last night. That Plasma Blast is insanely brutal. When all three healers could heal me, I was in good shape. If one got distracted by a Napalm Shot, I nearly died every time. I tried running away as he cast it, which didn't work, I'm sure our Rogue tried to kick it the first time it came up, which didn't work. Is it just meant to be a cooldown-chaining, heal-spamming thing?

 

Taiyoken

You just heal through it, start channeling a big heal when the castbar comes us, and just spam heals. No cooldowns needed.

 

jazka

We used two actual tanks on Steelbreaker and the Runeguy and a bear tanking the Vrykul untill Steelbreaker died. 3 healers for them, leaving us at 4 DPS, but it went down fast enough.

No, as the others get healed to 100% by Supercharge. Nothing really to moving out of the AoE, it just has to be dealt with.

E: Too slow..

 

Nakari

As the remaining boss(es) are healed to 100% when one of the three dies, no, DPSing all of them isn't a good idea. We killed them without much problems in the easy variant (Steelbreaker -> Runemaster -> Stormcaller), and as far as I remember a DPS-specced DK tanked Stormcaller until Steelbreaker's tank was free to grab him, his damage without Supercharge really isn't a problem for a plate wearer, I guess even a warlock or hunter pet coul tank him in 10man. Remember to utilize the Runes of Power as much as possible to boost your DPS.

 

KamPa

We just used single tank on Runemaster/Steelbreaker and pretty much ignored the Stormcaller - while CLs are annoying, killing Steelbreaker fast reduces AOE damage anyway. After that, just a single interrupter on Brundir, can even be a Resto Shaman. 3 tanks 3 healers seem little extreme dps wise.
And they heal after one of them dies, so no, your trick wouldn't work, it would be far too trivial to do 'hard modes' otherwise.

 

jazka

On the subject of Iron Council, which is meant to be the easiest way? I know Steelbreaker last is the hardmode, but we decided to kill the Runemaster last, and we found it easiest, but some say Stormcaller last. Does either variant provide some extra loot?

 

Rhaegal

We're a strictly 10-man guild and doing Ulduar10 (with only two healers, to boot). A few of us have done some random 25 man Naxx/OS pugs and gotten a smattering of gear from them, but I have by far the most 25 man gear of anyone in my guild. Our first Razorscale kill, 3 people looted their first Emblems of Valor. (Razorscale, since we did FL with a tower up and got Conquest.) We're making slow progress, but we're doing it, killing FL, Razorscale, XT-002, and getting about halfway through Ignis before it all goes to hell. We've spent about 5 hours in the zone this week, including some time under-manning FL.

I actually don't feel like Ignis is hard on 10 for the reasons people have said in this thread. Healing is super easy. Flame Jets do very little damage, he doesn't hit terribly hard, the only real damage are people in the Slag Pot and when the OT has to chill in the Scorch for a bit while waiting on a root. The issue we're having with Ignis is that if the wrong person gets Slag Potted (e.g., the person whose primary job it is to drag Molten adds into the water and shatter them), the attempt is basically over. I could see raid stacking for it so that you have tons of heavy hitting ranged DPS, but we only have two people who can shatter the constructs, a mage and a boomkin. Our 3rd ranged is a SV hunter who can't crit for over 5k in one hit without Kill Shot being active, and if you have melee try to kill them, the Shatter AoE destroys them. I understand the fight is doable, but I feel like it requires way more Slag Pot luck and/or raid stacking than the 25 man version, just because you're not losing a random 10% of your raid every time he does it, possibly leaving you without a critical role. Healing has never gotten out of control until the adds do though, even with two healers.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

Frogmite

You can time heals to land as the blast ends or chain cool-downs. We popped Guardian Spirit on the first and then Shield Wall on the second simply because they'd be off CD for later in the fight and so were otherwise wasted. It helps somewhat with the monotony of the fight while you're learning phase 4 also.

 

karokajoka

The scorch buffs stack. Position Ignis correctly, and you'll get a double tap of Scorch on the Golems. Makes for fast stacking of the debuff and an easier time.

Be aware, it stacks in both ways. IE - if you stand in a double stack, it's twice as bad.

 

Zuraghogar

We got a few pulls in on Freya 25 last night and found that the Snaplashers were stacking their damage buff but not being slowed. Anyone else have this problem and, if so, how did you deal with it?

 

Quietvicks

We ended up having our bear tank taunt one of the snaplashers when it was at low health and travel away. After finishing the other two, we brought it back and finished it.

 

Sillia

My guild has three people (1 healer, 2 DPS) wearing more 213 gear than 200 from pickup Naxx raids, everyone else is (tanks included) mostly 200 gear, with the occasional piece or two from Archavon or OS25 (which we 10-man). We've spent maybe a total of 6 or 7 hours in there, and defeated the first six bosses. The gear requirement feels tuned to be fairly tough, but reasonable... the only really endurance-heavy fight I'd say was probably Ignis. However, I did find that I was able to mitigate some of the scorch damage as add tank by stunning the construct and then backing out to *just* outside of scorch range and letting the construct move to me. If I didn't have a stun up, I'd have to eat the scorch damage. Perhaps a little fire resist for the offtank in that situation would be best.

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

We had a single tank on Molgeim / Brundir, with 2 tanks and 3 healers.

The other reason to kill Steelbreaker first is the various power-ups the Assembly members get. After one death: Brundir's can be largely handled by the tank, Molgeim's requires more movement, and Streelbreaker's requires tank swapping. The first two require little modification from the previous phase, while the third actually changes things around a bit. Plus the damage increase means Fusion Punch can really hurt.

EDIT: We've been doing it in 10-man gear plus whatever we can get from PuG 25s. The average ilevel is probably under 210. Everything so far has taken 3-8 wipes or so, and has felt well tuned. It feels well tuned: we wipe because we make mistakes, not because we're undergeared. We're loving the place.

 

Arantes

We did just that but it didn't help. In fact we all exited the instance to rebuff, eat and mount up and all ran in together but it was not enough, only when I returned to check 1 hour later was I able to walk in and not enter combat.

 

Krim

No YS discussion yet, please, per the forum sticky and post earlier in this thread.

 

Heenk

How are people handling the Shock Blast/Laser Barrage combos on Mimiron in phase 4? I've read the discussion a couple of pages back and we make sure the tank doesn't turn him, but if the tank runs out of Shock Blast the boss follows him as soon as the cast is over and the Laser Barrage sweeps the raid. Is there any way to counter that?

 

• Feist-Mok

Blow cooldowns and eat the blast seems to be the consensus.

 

Oliria

We got to Auriaya tonight on heroic and the exact same thing happened. When we finally got the pull right (its a hell on heroic) she would respawn her sentinels a minute or two into the fight causing a wipe. They did not respawn on their patrol route as far as I could see, just right on top of her. I have no idea what causes this bug, maybe the stairs again - we had about 6 tries on her, 2 of them where the pull succeded. First try our MT had her on top of the stairs and the sentinels respawn about 1½ min into the fight. Second try he was not on the stairs, but they respawned anyway - might have been because someone was feared onto the stairs but I don't know. I wrote a ticket to report this.

BTW do anyone have a clever tactic for the pull? we have 2 hunters MD 2-3 of the sentinels and our prot pala MT'ing, pulling her and the last sentinel with avenger shield. This can succed, but most of the time they miss-time it by 0.1 sec and one of the hunters or a tank gets raped by 4 sentinels. We begin the pull with all CDs active + priestshield/pain supression/sacrafice on tanks - still this doesn't seem to be enough for 4 sentinels. If the pull goes right it's pretty easy from there (if the damn cats would stop respawning)

edit: I might just add that they stopped respawning on normal after we went for Ignis and came back later when he was down. I thought this was because we tanked her on the higher platforms, but this doesn't seem to help on heroic.

 

Valerian

For Auriya pull we had the whole raid stand right at the corner of the wall so that a hunter could misdirect Auriya to the tank and have all the cats only get into LOS right next to the whole raid. This prevents them from pouncing. Each tank then pulls their cats away from each other after taunting/hitting them and everything works well. Was the smoothest way we had. Any other pull and inevitably someone got pounced and usually died.