The raid instance is well done and I have main tanked every encounter in there besides Yoggy which I have only seen Phase 2 briefly. But we are pushing Hard Modes as we go and did Heartbreaker in normal and chose Runemaster last in both heroic and normal. Freya +1 and did Flame Leviathan +2 as well.

Overall this instance is well tuned and I like it.

Going to be a fun time.

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.

]]> http://www.vanifae.com/2009/04/28/2-weeks-but-really-1-week-of-ulduar-part-1-siege-of-ulduar/feed/ 0 http://www.vanifae.com/2009/04/27/ulduar-progresssion-and-crappy-eggs/ http://www.vanifae.com/2009/04/27/ulduar-progresssion-and-crappy-eggs/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:03:33 +0000 Vanifae http://www.vanifae.com/?p=357 Ulduar progression continues unabated for Taurential Reign, just cleared Auriya and Assembly of Iron in Heroic Mode last night.  I maintanked both encounters last night, well on the Assembly I was on Steelbreaker and the interrupt duty on Stormcaller Brundir.  Fairly easy encounter tanking wise for a paladin just remember to dispell the Fusion Punch if you are not GCD locked.  I tended to save a cooldown just for that reducing my threat but hopefully saving myself with a Cleanse.  The other thing to watch out for is to move the boss out of the blue rune/void zone, Rune of Power, so he does not get extra damage output.

The Auriya encounter is all about the pull, the tanking part is relatively simple.  The most dificult part is to make sure she is turned in a direction that is advantageous to the raid after the fear.  If you are fear warded, resist the fear, or break it quickly then this is not an issue and you hould probably just stand there and have the raid run back.  If not just use your judgement and base where you face her on where the majority of the raid is feared to.  Move her as needed away from the void zones and push out as much damage as possible.

As far as Noblegarden is concerned I really hate this holiday, it encourages camping and doing unfun things.  I do like that alot of the items are able to be bought but the camping part and the static nature of the spawns lends the holiday a no-fun feel.  Worse then the Love Fool achievement in my opinion and I hope they rehaul this holiday next year and do soemthing better with it or just make it like it was a one day event with no attachment to the meta-achievement

for the mount.

Easily my least favorite holiday.

New upgrades as well: Dragonslayer’s Brace & Signet of the Earthshaker

Ulduar is awesome

I find add tanking to probably be the most difficult and thankless role. Even more so in then ten-man version. We finally got the ten-man Undying achievement and still trying to get the 25-man achievement. I hope we can knock it out before Ulduar but if not there are other achievements to get and I won’t feel too bad about it. I really should update more often and will strive to get a post up at least weekly if not sooner.

In other news with all this extra time not playing I have taken to reading and enjoying my Changeling: The Lost books, if I am not doing one nerd thing it is another.

Oh and Happy Birthday to my girlfriend.

Patch 3.1 is shaping up to be a very interesting overhaul of the classes.  Eyonix listed some of the changes coming and they are at least on paper, amazing.

Paladin

· Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

· Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

· Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

· Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

· Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

· Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

The Blessing of Kings change will be awesome and free up five points for both Protection and Retribution; hopefully we will see an 11 point talent in the Protection Tree. The Exorcism change is interesting and should paladin DPS/TPS from dipping after we move into Ulduar.  Should also help with leveling as well and give Retribution an additional pulling ability besides Hand of Reckoning.  The Shield of the Templar change gives us a much needed low cooldown silence and allows us to pull casters from range.  This is a huge change, and I can’t wait to make use of it; might actually make Less-Rabi easier to do for those that have not done it yet. I like how they are consolidating the tree down, maybe we will get some new toys in the near future. I can only assume that we will have some fun talents to work with hopefully for Protection.

The Guarded by the Light change was hinted at in the Mana Changes post and should hopefully help to ease our mana consumption but it has an interesting side of effect of making us want to use Judgement of Wisdom instead of Light since Divine Plea will have a larger Healing reduction post patch, from 20% to 50%. The Judgement of the Justchange gives Protection more PvP utility and another interrupt silence on a low cooldown as well.  I am not sure if these will all stick but these all serve to make Protection very difficult to deal with for casters.  I might actually get some PvP achievements done now.

I really like the changes I can’t wait to see the rest and the overall Ulduar patch, this poses to be a very exciting update for the game.

Oh and Happy Birthday to me.

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