moowalk

Yeah you're right, I should have mentioned time stamps. Off the top of my head one example was 2.66 seconds between unbalancing strike and tank death. That's more than just the swing timer lining up.

I'm talking about hard mode.

 

KamPa

Taunting post UBS didn't work for us on Hard Mode. UBS has potential for one shotting a tank, but his regular melee attacks are just as painful, with damage simply being spread across few hits. Healers were not able to keep up with such quick taunts, as MT would be low after UBS, and OT would instantly get few hits in. Add Volley to this, and it's tons of damage, which can kill either of them. I far prefer to chain cooldowns after 8th charge - between 3 tanks, they last until ~13 - at which point he hits so hard and fast, that it all becomes a lottery anyway. Cooldowns also tell you exactly who will tank and when - so you can shield/mending in preparation, which negates some initial 10k damage and helps with transition.
Didn't try 'resilence druid' so far, but I guess he'd get instagibbed by UBS at some point anyway. Eventually, it hits too hard to survive it without cooldowns.

 

ildon

UBS was hotfixed last Tuesday to be an on-next-attack ability so that it should be impossible for a normal attack and UBS to land at the same time.

See: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Recent In-Game Fixes - 5/22/09

 

Ayreon

A question, how do you prevent this from happening?



(everyone including the person in the picture had the FR ring equipped)

Is it just a matter of bad luck and good old random number generator? We killed him in the end but I'd like to prevent gibs like this in the future. Pehaps more FR gear is the answer...

 

KamPa

You could run away from Frost Nova, or use bit more FR/stamina. If it's melee - they usually have enough hitpoints to live through various nasty combos. Really, running after Sif blinks next to you helps a lot - unless she lands right on top of you, there's enough time to get away.

 

Gofa

Well, enough time for a coh to land - should have saved you. And you didn't use frost resist aura/totem, did you? It's impossible that you get hit by an unresisted frostnova with aura up + ring with almost 200 frost resistance.

The player did also have some time to use a healthstone. Of course you don't always know when you will be hit by another attack, but just look at Sif and if she's still casting, use your healthstone. Just use it - it's better than to die without using it.

 

Tyrian

According to the resistance mechanics thread you'll need 219 frost resistance to guarantee a 20% reduction in all frost damage. Of the 28350 damage taken in that screenshot, it'd have been reduced to a more livable maximum of 22 680 (the extra sta provided by the fr piece worn would help lower sta classes bump up to ~23k raid buffed health)

"Perhaps more FR gear" is just throwing stabs in the dark, the resistance mechanics thread sets out very definitive targets you need to guarantee a set % resistance reduction. Wearing anything less than said thresholds (such as what the player in the screenshot would have done) is just playing roulette.

To get 219 resist, most DPS just need to whack on a single piece of crafted gear, in addition to Paladin aura. Some classes (Eg mages: Magic Absorption talent) might be able to neglect wearing special gear, but still obtain the threshold value with talents.

 

Whitemane

It will happen, you simply just need better healers. That combo doesn't "just" happen, she teleports to a place and then does the frost nova shortly after. So while the log may show there was a 1.75s delay between the two abilities, there was in fact approximately 4-5 second between them because of the predictability of the frost nova. Your shamans, or priest, should see Sif teleport to a location and pick the frost nova victims and preemptively cast a healing spell to hit shortly after frost nova hits. It is a highly predictable ability and your healers "simply" need better awareness.

 

Tyrian

I'd assume Frost Nova - Spell - World of Warcraft is the spell. Two main points:

- The damage radius is slightly smaller than the root radius (Haven't confirmed this ingame, just going by wowhead)
- Has a 2.5 second cast time (Enough time for your raid healers to pre-charge heals on nearby people about to get hit, or enough time for DPS to run off and attempt to avoid taking the damage)

 

Bellante

When raid leading, we simply tell people to be aware of their surroundings. I've seen people less than 10 yards away from Sif not get hit, and it's absolutely fundamental that people move.

Blame it on the healers? Certainly a possibility, very good healers will be able to just heal the right people and keep them up. But there is enough going on with lightning charge, unbalancing strikes, blizzard and range checker to not chain chain lightning (no pun intended) to really expect them to be able to do this. In short, if you can teach your raid members to just move when they see her, versus your healers getting enough experience with the encounter to comfortably keep the raid alive, I'd say that learning to move will require less try's before a kill.

 

Jagiya

Lastnight we experienced a bug whereby Sif decided to stop casting completely, and chose to simply melee one of our Holy Paladins. The damage was trivial and it (obviously) reduced the difficulty of the fight tremendously, however the attempt had already been lost at this point (1 ranged member chained all of the melee) so we didn't benefit from it.

Has anyone else seen Sif resort to a standard threat table and melee people? I'm not sure what could have triggered it. Given the number of target-based abilities, the implications are pretty high. (Target died mid-cast, target CloS'd/Bubbled/Vanished/Ice Blocked/FD'd mid-cast, etc)

 

PsiVen

Sif has had a habit of meleeing people, but I can't say that I've observed her revert entirely to a standard threat table and stop casting. It's usually just a random whack. Sif actually hit very hard and was nerfed (hotfixed?) 2 weeks or so after release, as this used to cause one-shots of healers.

 

Nakari

She once whacked on our resto shaman for about 15 seconds, but mostly she just does one or two melee hits when she blinks on top of someone on her threat list (aka a healer).

 

Nathadir

As for the damage that Sif causes due to Frost Nova and Frostbolt Volley - you can't really expect your healers to negate this damage. Certainly one possibility is to wear more FrR gear, but it mostly comes down to everyone in the raid being aware of their surroundings; this, in fact, is probably the most important thing in most Ulduar fights, and certainly in hardmodes, as you will see on Freya, Mimiron, Vezax and Yogg-Saron as well - to mention a few.

 

Tyrian

Be sure to read the Resistance Mechanics Thread. It's old now and hasn't been bumped in a while. Probably gone unnoticed by many posters, but it's an invaluable resource.

Resistance Mechanics in WotLK

One one of the lesser Frost Resist items (waist/boots) in conjunction with Frost Aura will get you to 216 resistance. That thread mentions the benchmark for 20% minimum resist (to prevent 2-shot combos) is 219. However, his potential resists chart shows you have less than a 1% chance to resist only 10% with 216. You'll almost certainly still resist 20%+ at a minimum, almost all of the time.

One frost resist item, in conjuniction with Paladin Aura will result in roughly 30% of Sif's total damage resisted on average, with most people never resisting less than 20% of each spell. This is an excellent return on your investment, as Sifs 2-shot combos are quite nasty.

We tried Frost gear and knew 'it helped', but that resource by Shamgarr really shed some tangible light on how much it helps and why.

 

katholas

As an addition to the above post you can socket 1 Void Sphere in your FrR piece and it will put you at either 219 or 220, just enough to push 10% resists off the table completely. Most guilds probably still have a stockpile of void crystals lying around, may as well make use of them.

 

Lollersk8er

Make everyone have at least 25k hp. Do this by equipping 1-2 pieces of FR gear. Phase 2 is a lot easier now.

 

Suanas

Can anyone comment on the effectiveness of having a druid in pvp gear tank till 8-10 stacks then have two tanks rotate UBS?

we're having a huge problem with keeping tanks alive, we tried both ways but just doesnt seem to be working (but we also didnt know about the two safe zones, probably going to try it out this sunday.) we got him to 20% at stack 11 wen tanks just fell like flies.

 

vorda

We're not even using a druid in tank gear. We're making our druid pop his own CD's starting at stack 7, he usually runs out around stack 9, then I bubble, disac, taunt (when the ubs CD is almost up). He taunts back after a bit. Then we have 2x pala CDs, 2-3x priest CD's and a warrior tank with all his cooldowns up.

He should die around 13-14 stacks max.

A great dps tip is that the warbringer haste aura is raid wide (no idea since when). The DPS (and healing) becomes quite a bit easier once you have a priest dedicated to MC.

 

Ghaash

I made this for my guild and think it might help some others out there. While thinking of positions i was too fixed on symmetry and uniform distribution to totally overlook the second safezone on the "left". It obviously would be way better to place the "circle-group" directly in the safezone with 2 MT-healers and one mindcontrolling priest.
brown= MT(s)
red= 2 ranged 1 heal/2 heal 1 mindcontrol
orange= 4 melee
blue=blizzard area
pink=lightning charge cone

 

Nartas

^^How do you prevent one shots from chain lightning at >8 or so stacks with having three ranged clump up on top. We originally ran with a strat similar to this but people would get one shot later in the fight with two others next to them so we had to spread out so that only two people were in range. Does anybody else use two people stacking up instead of three?

Can anyone else confirm that Guardian aura is now raid wide and NOT party wide anylonger?

 

Charsi

Yes.

 

xmod2

With the Aura of Celerity being raid wide, does anyone know if it stacks?

When dpsing the arena mobs, there seems to be a stack of the buff for each Warbringer that is alive.

 

Suanas

Interesting observation but i dont think you can afford to put 2 priests out the fight unless you plan to run with two shadowpriests or your guild is priest heavy. Bear in mind that the boss gains the buff when the add isnt Mc'd so u wanna think about that. If it stacks 40% extra haste on the boss if your priest isnt mc'in = instant dead tank nothing can heal thru that, even during a non UBS.

Thanks for the positioning post, and thanks for the tanking suggestion, mite give that a shot this week.

EDIT: Does anyone know if thorim is affected by parry mechanics? is it safer to have ur tanks stacked on the current mt just use thunderclap demo shout etc and not atk boss at late stacks?

 

Jagiya

I haven't seen evidence of any Parry Hasting-enabled bosses in Ulduar yet. It'd be quite helpful if someone were to discover and post a definitive list of yes/no's in Ulduar.