I should be studying for a Java programming exam but I have some time to kill to talk about my experiences in Ulduar. I will break the overview up into three parts, each section pertaining to a subzone of the raid instance. This only covers the content I have cleared or experienced and should not be taken as gospel but just a collection of my experiences. Breakdown of Part 1 after the break.
The Siege of Ulduar
The first area is the siege of Ulduar consisting of the vehicle combat phase, which is pretty fun and well done much better than Malygos phase 3, and three boss encounters with very little trash after Flame Leviathan. With no towers up this fight is cake and should be easily disposed of even by PuG groups in normal and heroic versions. In the normal version I have done Orbital Bombardment which awards 2 Emblems of Conquest for the “Hard” mode. We left the Tower of Flame up which allowed him to leave fire trails and drop flame walls to cut off the raid and did massive damage if you have to pass through them. Still relatively easy, but requires more execution than the easy version including catapulting raid members onto the boss to disable it. In either version I have only driven the siege tank so my experience with the vehicles is limited. This week we hope to do the Heroic version Orbital Bombardment leaving up the same tower.
Next we normally tackle Razorscale; another simple encounter that is reminiscent of Akama in Black Temple. Tanking this is fairly straight forward, usually handle the center where the Dark Rune Sentinels spawn on the Heroic version; we usually have an abundance of tanks. Typically one just has to watch out for grabbing the adds and making sure to get out of Devouring Flame. This is all Phase 1 in Phase 2 the tanking is fairly simple and requires an off-tank for normal and heroic, taunting when you get 2-3 stacks of the Flame Buffet. Fairly simple and not very exciting. On normal I have done A Quick Shave; not all that difficult to do with properly geared raiders. This is another encounter that is possible with a decent PuG and requires very little execution besides setting off the harpoons and making sure people stand behind the boss.
The last two bosses are more complex with Ignis being an execution endurance fight and Deconstructor being a DPS/execution fight. The trash leading up to Ignis requires some setup but not much. The molten giants at the entrance should be tanked out of line of sight of the tanks healer, once they are dead they will apply a debuff that jumps around the raid until the raid gets into Ignis’ room and jumps in the water. The fire revenants should be split up and the golems should be turned and piled together with the raid clumping on them. Ill-prepared this trash can be fairly brutal. But once experienced is very easy to deal with.
Ignis requires movement for the main tank and competent off-tanks to get the ads into the scorched earth and a dedicated DPS on either side to shatter them to keep the boss from gaining too many damage buffs. The strategy we use is to tank him in a rectangle around the middle band that cuts the floor into two sections. I usually start on the right side with him facing away from the raid. Once he uses Scorch the tank moves to the new position with him still facing away from the raid. He will occasionally charge into the raid and put people into his slag pot just be sure to reposition him after this happens. This is not an aggro drop. His other major ability is Flame Jets, and he will often use this ability before he does Scorch; knocking you up into the air and then scorching forcing you to move immediately upon landing. If you are confident with strafing, moving, and maintaining optimal threat on the move this fight is fairly fun. Definitely my favorite of the first four encounters.
Finally we have Deconstructor a DPS check with a gimmick of adds and a fairly stringent enrage mechanic. The trash in this area is very bad if you don’t know what to kill first. We found the compacto-bots to be the best first choice with the little repair bots being the last ones to kill. The trash is brutal if you don’t have a valid kill order and strategy but not insurmountable once you know. Deconstructor is fairly straightforward tanking wise; he does not require moving or any real gimmicks from the main tank. The add tanks handle the large adds in the Heart Phase while the MT just does damage. I would recommend erring on the side of health for progression purposes, he can hit quite hard and Tympanic Tantrum is a raid wide concern. This is really more a test of DPS and execution then a true tank challenge and requires little more from the MT then providing high threat and staying alive. Best to save any cool downs for sub- thirty percent when healer manner is getting strained.
Overall I like the siege area and you don’t even have to clear all the bosses to move to the next area, Deconstructor guards the door to the next area. I really like the feel and look of Ulduar and I think this is the best raid instance they have developed yet. It oozes atmosphere and challenge and the hard mode really put the top end raids to the test.
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