Ulduar Update

I have been so busy with work Real Life and WoW that I have not posted here in a while. Here it goes!

Oh My! Patch 3.1

Patch 3.1 was released about a week earlier than anyone had anticipated. There were the usual server crashes and technical issues that come along with such a massive content update. My guild partially funded its members Dual Spec investment. Hopefully this new game feature will encourage players to tune their specs for current raiding content since we don't enforce raid oriented skills.

Flame Leviathan

Once the server lag settled down, we jumped immediately into Ulduar 25. Flame Leviathan is a free loot vehicle encounter. Since it is so easy, I wouldn't mind trying to complete the easiest of its various Hard Modes which involves destroying towers to remove buffs on the boss.

Some players in this guild are vehicle haters due to frustration experienced in Occulus, Malygos and also the principle of not using one's own abilities. These players seemed to tolerate or even enjoy the Flame Leaviathan encounter!

After Flame Leviathan, we had to decide where to go next. During the first week of Uduar, there was a bug on Ignis where players would take an inordinate amount of damage if they were hit my Melee while they were in his stomach. There was a Blue post which also indicated that the Enrage timer on Razorscale was too short. These bugs were later fixed, however at the time the most logical boss to go kill next was XT002-Deconstructor.

"I guess it doesn't bend that way!"

XT was probably inspired by a Blizzard encounter designer's 2 year old. This encounter accurately immerses one in the life of a parent of a 2 year old because this fight can be aggravating.

The first time we tried this boss, everyone was just getting used to the strategy for the boss. The next week we struggled a bit but the healers did a great job during the Tantrum Phase, the DPS on the heart was solid and add management was good for the most part. Since some players did not move at all when they had the Gravity and Light debuffs, position adjustments were made so that the healers were separate from the ranged DPS group.

After much discussion in the guild's IRC channel and discussion among the Raid Leaders, the strategy for this fight has been refined for this guild. I am confident that we can complete this encounter this week. One issue is that since we banged our heads on this encounter for a week, some strong players have not been signing up (likely due to frustration). A kill this week would certainly increase morale and encourage the faint hearted players to push forward in this difficult instance.

I'll make a post about the success that we have had in the 10 man version soon (work calls)!