Like many folks, we made our first forays into Ulduar this week on both 10 man and 25 man. First thing is first, Ulduar is a bit harder than Naxx. It’s not worlds above it, but the combination of the new content and new bosses makes it difficult. I don’t care if those l33t guilds are clearing it already, it’s tough. However, it is not frustratingly tough. The only boss that has gotten to the QQ point is Ignis, but apparently our entire server has had trouble with him. He’s not easy.

Flame Leviathan
This fight is really, really fun. Especially the gauntlet beforehand. Unless people are being real idiots and not paying attention, the first part shouldn’t give anyone trouble and should just be used as some fun, getting loose time and familiarizing yourself with the vehicles. So far I’ve driven the siege engine as a tank and the chopper. The chopper is one of the most fun things ever, seriously. Speed burst through mobs, sonic horn, sonic horn, drop some tar … SUCK MY WAKE!

The strategy really depends on your role. If on a chopper, be sure to drop tar in front of him as soon as it’s CD is up and pick up launched passengers. As a siege engine, interrupt his flame jets and stay on his ass when you are not the one currently being pursued. It also seems to be bugged right now in that there is no button to push when you kill the turrets. In order to cause an overload and stun FL, you have to kill all the turrets instead (2 on normal, 4 on heroic). He also pursues demolishers just the same as siege engines, no matter where they are.

Razorscale
The ultra-cool looking dragon is just past FL and across from Ignis. During the first phase you should stay at range (of course) and help MD stray adds to your tanks. Watch out for Devouring flames during the entirety of the fight. They are bright and blue, so they are not hard to miss. If MM specced and you are fast enough, you can silencing shot the chain lightning ability of the Dark Rune Watchers. If your tank is not currently targeting them though, you can risk pulling aggro when you switch targets. However, their ability does a lot of damage so they should be burned first. On 25man, the Dark Rune Sentinels should be tanked away from the raid by another OT due to their whirlwind ability.

When the dwarves have repaired enough harpoon guns, you can fire them at Razorscale to bring her down for a burn phase. If necessary, try and clean up as many adds as possible before firing the gun so all DPS can focus on Razorscale. Attack from behind when she is on the ground and go all out. Sometimes my aggro spiked but it doesn’t matter, she isn’t going anywhere.

Once Razorscale is at 50%, phase 2 begins. Basically stay behind her, fire away while the tanks taunt back and forth for the debuff she puts on them. Other than that, phase two is tank and spank.

XT-002 Deconstructor
First and foremost, turn your sound on. The emotes on XT are hilarious. I honestly think our first wipe was due to us laughing so much. His first phase is just a burn phase. The tank should tank him right at the bottom of the stairs facing away from the raid and DPS bunch up behind him. During this phase XT will cast Light Bomb and Gravity Bomb on people. Those affected need to get 10 yards away from the raid quickly to avoid damage. He will also occasionally do a tantrum where he pounds the ground and causes a lot of raid damage. This must be healed through and what killed my pet most of the time. Try and throw a Mend Pet up as often as you can and especially when he starts to yell “No, no, no, no!”

At each 25% of XT’s health, he will go into a “rest” phase where he become untargetable. He will spawn adds from each of the four corners of the area (but not always from every corner). Scrapbots heal XT if they get to him, so you should volley them as they are getting close to XT. They don’t have much health so don’t run all the way to the corners to try and get them. The Boombots do a lot of damage when they explode and should be killed at range. However, they do AoE damage to the NPCs as well, so if given the opportunity kill them within a mob of Scrapbots. EDIT: As of 3.1.1, the adds can be rooted, snared or slowed. Use your frost traps as needed. Pummelers need to be off-tanked. Misdirect to your OT if necessary.

Now, there is a trick with the heart. The heart is used to trigger XT’s hard mode, however, it can be used to make the fight significantly easier and is how we downed him. When the heart is exposed any damage done to it (1.2M HP on normal) is also done to XT. Also, you do double damage to it so it is a fast way to get XT’s health down low. As soon as his heart is exposed, DPS should do as much damage to the heart as possible without killing it and being mindful of the adds. Personally, I would DPS for about 5-10 seconds and then clean up as many adds as I could before XT becomes active again. As soon as he is active and able to be targeted, DPS should switch to him while still doing what they can to control and clean up adds.

Now, if you use the heart method DPS must control their DPS. If you have folks in your raid that do not know how to pay attention to the mobs health and stop DPSing when called for, put them on adds. If you kill XT’s heart it activates his hard mode, which restores his HP to full, bumps up his damage output and gives him new abilities. No one is ready for that yet. Using this method though we got him to 50% very fast and skipped almost an entire burn phase of Light Bombs and Gravity Bombs. Also, the heart resets its HP at each rest phase, so it can be damaged again each time.

Repeat and you should be OK. Hesston even got some new gloves off the whiny robot on 10-man.

Next time: Kologarn, The Iron Council and Auriaya.

Categories: 3.1, guild, hunters, hunters scope, raids
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