Ulduar Fights Where It’s Just Not the Healer’s Fault

I’ve experienced just about type of death in Ulduar. I’d die to Constrictor tentacles. Early on, I’d get rocked by Hodir’s Flash Freeze. Sometimes I’d get unlucky with a Rocket Strike.

Today’s post is designed to help you identify under what situations a healer is at fault and when it is simply out of their hands. Keep in mind there are several exceptions. In most cases, tanks are the one that will be bearing the brunt of these abilities. If they die, odds are good they weren’t at full health. If it were any other player, well let’s take a look shall we?

This is a really long post. I’d consider using it as a reference when trying to troubleshoot your raid to see if there really was anything that could have been done to keep players alive.

Flame Leviathan

Nothing much here. I don’t send healers onboard the tank. I usually send up hybrid DPS who are able to heal in addition to DPS.

Razorscale

You died because of:

• Devouring Flame – Your fault. Should not have been standing in them. It’s the blue stuff on the ground.
• Flame Breath – Your fault. Don’t stand in front of Razor when this happens. Tanks are an exception.
• Fireball – Our fault. It’s only 11000 damage or so. However, there are times when a player does get gibbed by these. I’ve been hit by this twice in a row in the span of a half second. I happened to have a shield up which saved me with a 15% health left.

Ignis

You died because of:

• Scorch – Your fault. Why on earth would you stand on a big giant tower of fire?
• Flame Jets – Our fault. Players should be in the green when Flame Jets connect.
• Slag pot – Our fault. You can help even more though if you can. I cast Lesser Healing Wave on myself when I play my Elemental Shaman to help the heals out.
• Construct explosion – Your fault. Run the heck out before it gets detonated.

Deconstructor

You died because of:

• Gravity Bomb – Neither. It’s the job of the guy who got Gravity Bomb to get clear. If he’s too close, he pulls you in and detonates. Bomb guy’s fault.
• Light Bomb – Both. It’s the Light bomb’s duty to also get clear. But the raid will take 2 or 3 ticks of Light Bomb damage. Our job is to heal that up. Requires effort on both parts.
• Tympanic Tantrum – Our fault. We should be able to outheal the damage done by Tympanic Tantrum.
• Bomb bot – Your fault. Should not be within proximity of these things when they explode.

Iron Council

You died because of:

• Fusion Punch – Our fault. Unless none of the healers are dispellers. Then it’s the dispeller’s fault. That debuff has to come off quick.
• High Voltage – Our fault. Steelbreaker’s aura. Everyone gets hit by it no matter what. It just has to be out healed.
• Rune of Death – Your fault. Shouldn’t be standing in it.
• Chain Lightning – Both. It depends on how much damage you take. If you die to a chain lightning, check to see if you were properly spaced up. You can stay with 1 or maybe 2 other players nearby. That type of damage is survivable. If your health was too low for a period of time, then its our fault for not getting you back in the green quick enough.
• Lightning Whirl – Both. It should be interrupted. It’s normal to see 1 or 2 ticks slip through. Most players should be able to survive that. If you didn’t survive it, then chances are you weren’t topped either.
• Overload – Your fault. When the little guy stops moving and starts doing his Kamehameha move, run out of the blast zone.
• Lightning Tendrils – Both. It’s difficult to outrun this. Some players are going to get caught in them. At the same time, a concerted effort should be made by those not being focused to run away from it, not run towards it. Focused players are taking 3000 – 5000 damage per second. It’s possible if its one or two players. It’s a nightmare if it’s five or so.
• Melee hit for 30000 – Not our fault. Ideally a cooldown will be popped. I know when I see Steelbreaker on the tank, I’ll drop a Pain Suppression reflexively on the tank to buy some extra time to get him repositioned. Sometimes Murphy likes to come along and crap on your raid with a Rune of Powered up Fusion Punch. One word: Screwed.

Kologarn

You died because of:

• Shockwave – Our fault. No player should be that low when Shockwave connects. Otherwise they’re dead.
• Stone Grip – Our fault. Gripped players just have to be kept alive until the arm takes enough damage.
• Focused Eyebeam – Your fault. On the one hand, your health should be high enough to eat a tick or two if necessary. On the other hand, if you have several seconds to run and kite the beam before you start registering damage.

Auriaya

You died because of:

• Seeping Feral Essence – Your fault. It’s basically a void zone. Get out of it.
• Sonic Screech – Neither. Some players weren’t stacking up when it went off. Obviously if you’re at 5% health when it hits, you’re probably going to die. Should be in the green as much as possible.
• Sentinel Blast – Our fault. It’s healer duty to heal up the initial parts of the blast. The faster the interrupts, the less we have to worry about it.

Hodir

You died because of:

• Biting Cold – Your fault. Keep jumping. Keep strafing. Keep dancing and moving.
• Flash Freeze – Your fault. Weren’t fast enough getting into a snow drift.
• Icicles – Your fault. You can see the blue runes on the ground. You know where they’re coming from.
• Frozen Blows – Our fault. There’s nothing you can really do to avoid it. It’s up to us healers to play triage on the whole raid.

Thorim

You died because of:

• Charge Orb – Your fault. Should be standing near the center of the room to avoid this when in the arena.
• Smash – Your fault. Should not be standing in front of the Rune Giant in the gauntlet.
• Shockwave-like ability – Your fault. Dodge them.
• Rune Detonation – Your fault. You see the fire shield above the target, get clear of them.
• Chain Lightning – Both. Don’t stand with more than 2 other people. There’s only so much space in the room and you do have to dodge Lightnign Charges.
• Lightning Charge – Your fault. When you see the streams coming from the wall towards Thorim, break off quickly.

Freya

You died because of:

• Detonating Lashers – Our fault. Unless your raid manages to precisely kill all of them at the same time.
• Nature Bomb – Your fault. When you see these big green balls on the ground, that’s your cue to move.

Mimiron

You died because of:

• Napalm Shell – Our fault. We have to be able to heal this through.
• Plasma Burst – Our fault. Tanks and healing cooldowns must be used so that they can live.
• Shock Blast – Your fault. We can’t outheal 100000 damage all at once.
• Proximity Mine – Your fault. No comment.
• Heat Wave – Our fault. Shouldn’t be a problem healing this up.
• Rapid Burst – Out fault. No good reason why we’d die to this either.
• Rocket Strike – Your fault. Stand out of the red stuff on the ground.
• Laser Barrage – Your fault. Nothing we can do about this either. Up to you to make a run for it.
• Bomb bot – Neither. These things do a lot of damage when they explode. By now, your raiders should be able to survive at least one of these with you at full health. Hopefully the rest of your raid can kill these before they become an issue.

General Vezax

You died because of:

• Shadow Crash – Your fault. Outrun these. We’ll do what we can to heal up the player or two that gets hit by it.
• Searing Flames – Neither. Someone missed an interrupt. This should not be going off at all.
• Surge of Darkness – Neither. Depends on the strategy. With defensive cooldowns, it shouldn’t be a problem.
• Mark of the Faceless – Neither. Again, this requires the efforts of both. The target has to run out fast. Those nearby need to be healed up quickly.
• Saronite Vapors – Your fault. Be very careful about staying in too late. As a Priest, I Prayer of Mending on stack 6, and Shield myself on 7 and escape with about half my health. Others may not be as lucky.

Yogg-Saron

You died because of:

• Shadow Nova – Our fault. Unless your raid killed like 5 guardians at the same time.
• Death Ray – Your fault. These green beams start off harmless at first and don’t move. When you see them, get clear. It amazes me how many players still stand there after it’s been there for several seconds. Drop what you’re doing and move.
• Crusher Tentacles – Your fault. Shouldn’t be in melee range of these. They will kill with one blow.
• Brain Link – Technically our fault. But run towards each other quick!
• Squeeze – Our fault. We have to keep you alive long enough for the DPS to break you out.
• Sanity – Your fault. There is nothing we can do if your sanity reaches zero.

And there you have it! Use this list only as a rough guideline. There are always exceptions to everything. Look into the context of what happened before making a judgment. You don’t always have to assign fault. But it is important to find out what happened so you can make sure it doesn’t happen again. You’ll notice that a lof of these deaths are easily preventable by healers. But there are some rare cases where there’s just nothing we can do short of a psychic Guardian Spirit on a player.

Yes, you’ll notice I didn’t add any comments on Algalon. I haven’t engaged him and it won’t be for a while.

The Northrend Beasts Encounter

Here’s a video of the fight courtesy of WoWRaid (and Irae). Check out the different abilities and the loot table.

European players get a treat as they got to check out an encounter on the EU PTR (unannounced I might add).

This appears to be one of the first encounters you’ll find entering raid aspect of the coliseum. The sequence here is that it’s 3 sets of mobs that come in one after the other. A Hunter provides the video perspective here (and wow, I’ve never seen those kinds of numbers before but then again, I’ve never played a Hunter). It looks to be an encounter that’ll take a little under 9 minutes or so give or take.

Gormok

Seems like a straightforward tank and spank. I noticed the Hunter had to switch fire periodically. Looked like he was targeting members of the raid and trying to shoot something off. That’s some serious precision right there.

Acidmaw and Dreadscale

These damned Storm Peaks snakes again. I thought I had seen the last of them in the cavern when I was getting all the Oil and stuff out of there. Figures they’d be back again.

Icehowl

The first thing I noticed about his abilities is that he does a ~70000 damage headbutt followed by a stun. Oi vey.

Looks like you’ll be engaging all of these bosses one after the other with little to no reprieve. I can’t wait!

Koralon the Flame Watcher: New VoA Boss

Here’s a first look at the new VoA boss.

This what ultimately VoA is going to look like. We have an Earth boss, a Storm (air) boss, and now a Fire boss. I wonder where the Water boss is going to be situated.

Boss abilities

Not sure if there’s official names for them. That video was shot from the perspective of a Warrior (Arms I think).

First ability is the assorted flame patches that drop around. Stand out of the fires.

Second ability is the flame whirl like thing he does where he spins around and unleashes fire in every direction.

Expect this boss to drop tier 9 level loot.

I’m still downloading the 1.15 GB file right now for the PTR patch. I should be suiting up and ready to go within the next several hours.

Healing Ulduar: XT-002 Deconstructor

Welcome to Ulduar folks. If you made it past the lag, the vehicles, and the guard-dragon, and you didn’t get sidetracked by Ignis’ Hot Pockets, chances are you’ll soon find yourself standing in front of my favorite shiny robot in the game, the XT-002 Deconstructor. She just wants to give everyone a big hug . . . a spine-cracking hug, that is. She reminds me of eeeevil pet collector Elmyra from the Animaniacs. In all seriousness, Blizzard outdid themselves here. The boss’s animations and voice are oh-so-entertaining, and this fight provides a juicy-yet-manageable challenge for healers. Conquest downed XT on 4/21 using this strategy.

Essential Abilities

To effectively heal this boss, all healers need to make sure that their unit frames show the following three abilities. If you are a Grid or Pitbull user, add these to your custom debuffs.

Gravity Bomb
This ability places a debuff on a player. They need to move away from others to avoid causing AoE damage. This debuff does not tick immediately but rather does a significant chunk of damage at the delay of a few seconds. A player with Gravity Bomb will need a large heal once the ability triggers.

Light Bomb
This ability places a debuff on a player, and as with Gravity Bomb, the player must move away from others to avoid causing AoE Damage. This debuff is a strong, fast-ticking dot, and it lasts 9 seconds, dealing 3500 damage each tick. A player with Light Bomb needs immediate and steady attention.

Tympanic Tantrum
Of the three abilities, this one is the most dangerous. Tympanic Tantrum deals damage equal to 10% of each player’s maximum health every 1 sec for 12 sec. Nearby enemies are also dazed for the duration. Every player in the raid needs to receive a medium amount of healing in order to survive this ability. AoE and group heals (Divine Hymn, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, Wild Growth, Tranquility) are good solutions.

Healing Assignments

In order to meet the dps minimum for the boss, you will probably need either 6 or 7 healers. These assignments will assume 6. Consult the following diagram for the optimum positioning of your 6 healers.

As always, the diagram is coded by class color. Our favorite arrangement uses a paladin and a tank healing-specced druid on the MT. On the raid, we have had good luck with using two priests, one shaman, and one raid-healing specced druid. In this diagram, you’ll notice that H3 and H4 are standing together, as are H5 and H6. The raid splits into two groups, and ranged dps stacks with raid healers. This grouping makes it easier for the person with Light Bomb or Gravity Bomb to run away. Your MT healers will have to cheat forward a bit of the pile of players in order to be in range of the tank. XT is big–approximately 10 yards across–and your tank will be on the far side.

Techniques

I’ve had the pleasure to both MT and raid heal for this fight, so I can share with you my top strategies for both positions. The key to this fight is using your abilities wisely.

MT healing
Two healers are necessary because this bot hits hard! Damage is spiky because the boss hits hard but swings slowly. We found a combination of a Resto Druid and a Holy Paladin to be very successful. The druid can keep some HoTs on the MT even through the Exposed Heart phase, in which there is no damage to the tank. We’ve lost the tank before when XT has come back with a vengeance, so be prepared with some HoTs or shields. Throughout the fight, the druid will probably be able to make a small contribution to raid healing. During Tympanic Tantrum, both MT healers will raid heal, and during the Heart phase, the paladin can probably dps, with the druid contributing as well if she is able to afford the mana hit.

Raid Healing
I learned the hard way that HoTs won’t cut it for Gravity Bomb and Light Bomb. For Gravity Bomb, have raid healers shield or pre-HoT and then time a big nuke heal to land as the bomb explodes. For Light Bomb, the player will need a series of quick heals (Flash of Light, Flash Heal, Lesser Healing Wave) or a combination of HoTs and direct heals. A Rejuv+Swiftmend is not enough. With my raid healing build, I was using HoTs + glyphed Healing Touch to good effect. Light Bomb is the more dangerous of the two bombs because it hits fast and hard.

For Tympanic Tantrum, HoTs and AoE heals are king. I was having great luck with Tranquility, Wild Growth, and Lifebloom during this phase. When you assign raid healers, make sure you distribute your AoE healers evenly on both sides.

Melee and Offtanks
There’s no way to get around doing double duty on this fight. At least one offtank will assist a couple of ranged dps with controlling the adds. Specific Raid Healers (perhaps H4 and H5) should be assigned to keeping the adds team alive.

Melee will need some attention, but Judgement of Light, if you have it, goes a long way towards keeping them healthy. We assigned our Resto Shaman to chain heal the melee group when she could.

DPS the heart!

All of the non-tree healers in your raid should switch to dps-ing the heart when it is exposed. Every little bit helps you meet the very high dps demand! I also recommend that any raid-healing druids switch forms and dps the heart. However, the MT healing druid should keep her HoTs on the tank, because XT returns suddenly and with a vengeance. If she can sneak a Moonfire in there too, by all means.

Mana Control

This fight has a few moments that will allow for OOFSR regen. It’s fairly tough on mana, and you will probably use a potion and your mana-restoration abilities (Innervate, Shadowfiend) if you are only carrying six healers. The fight is short with a 6 min enrage timer, but it’s fast and furious, so you can blow your mana if you’re not careful. If you find yourself running out, take a break instead of using your mana for offensive spells when the heart is exposed.

A Healer Check?

This boss tests healers in more ways than one. I like to think of it as a healing assignment check. Everyone has to do his or her specific job, and there’s no time for sniping. Moreover, you need a good balance of single-target and AoE heals to pull this off with 6 healers. There is both heavy Main Tank damage and extensive raid damage. Expect to use all of your skills.

Healing Ulduar: Razorscale

For other bosses in Ulduar, check the Ulduar Healing strategy page.

Conquest was able to clear out Razorscale on day 2 of Ulduar. It’s a fun encounter and places a lot of emphasis on ad control.

Quick notes

• 3 phase encounter
• Repeated waves of incoming trash

Pre-boss preparation

Suggested makeup

• 3 tanks
• 7 healers
• 15 DPS

As raid leader, I like to split my raid into groups that have meaning in the raid frames. In other words, I set aside groups 1 and 2 to deal with trash ads coming in from the left side. Groups 4 and 5 would take care of the right. I made sure there was 1 tank and 3 healers in each ad control team. Try to split up interrupters as best as you can since you’ll want them to disrupt as many chain lightning casts as possible. It’s difficult to evenly split the DPS so use your discretion there accordingly.

Group 3 consists of your third tank and the 4 healers that were unable to fit into either teams.

Warrior tank	Hunter	Druid tank	Hunter	Paladin tank
Resto Shaman	Rogue	Disc Priest	Rogue	Resto Shaman
Mage	Death Knight	Resto Druid	Death Knight	Warlock
Mage	Balance Druid	Holy Paladin	Ret Paladin	Mage
Shadow Priest	Resto Druid	Holy Priest	DPS Feral Druid	Hunter

That’s a rough visual representation of how I split my groups. Dark blue team on the left, light blue team on the right. Gold team is responsible for big, bad whirlwind titan’s which I’ll elaborate on in a moment.

Process

Phase 1

On the ground, the things you have to worry about are the incoming mobs that spawn from the different drill-shaped ground pods. Meanwhile, Dwarven expedition teams will be repairing the four harpoons.

Razor’s attacks

Fireball: Fire damage to players

Flame buffet: Increases fire damage taken by players. I believe this ability stacks. It’s duration is ~1 minute.

Devouring Flame: Spits a Lava Bomb at a player inflicting fire damage and leaves a fiery patch on the ground dealing fire damage to everyone within 6 yards.

She enrages after 10 minutes.

Add attacks

Dark Rune Guardian: Puts a magical debuff on your raid. Dispelable. Will go after your friendly expedition dwarves. 

Dark Rune Sentinel: Whirlwind. These guys typically spawn in the middle.

Dark Rune Watcher: Interrupt their Chain Lightning when possible. Their Chains can hit up to 5 targets.

Adds will show up from the left and right. Dark blue and light blue teams will have to take care of them via DPS and CC’s if necessary.

Now gold team gets to have some fun here. That Devouring Flame ability I mentioned above? Here’s a hint I found out from the Plusheal forums. Devouring Flame can be predicted and controlled. Razor shoots Devouring Flames at the player closest to it. So all gold team has to do is stay under the boss as much as possible and soak up incoming flames. The Disc Priest in that group (me) just heals him. At the same time, gold team needs to pick up Dark Rune Sentinels that show up in the middle.

Gold team in action

The tanking Druid played first person and looked up. I stayed within range in support. When I see a Sentinel spawn, I’ll cue him and let him know there’s a sentinel and he’ll pick it up right away. Once gold team establishes aggro, he calls for ranged DPS to focus and nuke. Once the sentinel is down, it’s back to add control.

There are four harpoons. When they’re all repaired and fired, Razorscale is brought down to the ground. Get three harpoons fired and hold on the fourth one. You fire them by having a player from either blue teams right click on the turrets. Your raid leader should call when to fire the fourth one. When most of the ads are dead, cue the fourth turret call.

When a Harpoon is fixed, it will flash on your screen. I personally like to say things like “harpoon 1 fired, harpoon 2 fired, harpoon 3 fired, harpoon 4 standing by” so that the entire raid knows where we’re at.

Phase 2

When the raid leader calls for harpoon 4 to be hit, all DPS should be switching off ads. Anything extra should be CC’d in the process. Razor will fall to the ground and remain stunned for seconds. Full DPS on Razor at this point. Stay away from the front of this boss. After time is up, Razor will do a wing buffet knocking everyone back and light a conical flame breath. She’s facing the entrance into this area while she’s stunned.

After the stun wears off, the turrets will explode and have to be repaired again. Razor flies back into the air and triggers phase 1 again.

This would be the phase to hit Heroism or Bloodlust to push Razor into phase 3. If Razor’s health isn’t low enough then you have to do phase 1 all over again.

Phase 3

Have your main tank of choice pick up Razor and immediately face her away from the raid. A good position would have Razor face the entrance just past the turrets. She’s going to continue to do AoE knockbacks (Wind Buffet), Devouring Flame, and Flame Buffets. The Flame Buffet debuffs will continue to stack. If it reaches a certain point, it’s going to insta-kill your tank.

Fused Armor is another debuff your tank will take. When it reaches 5 stacks, your tank is not going to be able to move, use skills or taunt. You’ll have to change tanks before it reaches 5 to buy enough time for your raid to finish her off.

Your raid positions themselves and spreads out behind the boss during this part.

Healing strategy

For both blue teams, you’ll want 2 raid healers and 1 tank healer on each side. You’ll also want 1 tank healer in the gold team. Stay as far back as possible to avoid any chain lightnings that manage to get through. Use strong AoE heals to mitigate them as well. During phase 2 when DPS switches over, the tank healers need to remain on the tank if they’re on any ads. Any idle healers are encouraged to jump up into the play and DPS the boss during phase 2.

Healer drops

Belt of the Fallen Wyrm – Mail

Bracers of the Broodmother – Leather

Guiding Star – Mace

Razorscale Shoulderguards – Plate

Shackles of the Odalisque – Wrists

Healing Ulduar: Flame Leviathan

For other bosses in Ulduar, check the Ulduar Healing strategy page.

I managed to squeeze some PTR time on this boss earlier in the weeks before. But here’s a step-by-step break down of what you need to do in order to get through the encounter.

Quick notes

• Vehicular fight
• Trash should be cleared using your vehicles
• After ~two attempts on the boss, trash will respawn (not sure if there’s a link to time)
• Four towers control the difficulty of the boss
• Vehicle health is based on item level not stats

Map

 

Trash phase

This is not a Hyjal style waves encounter. Your raid group will have access to vehicles first. When your raid is ready to move out, speak to Brann Bronzebeard to engage the Iron army.

(Click image for dialogue)

Tower information

Your targets are the four towers throughout the area. The difficulty level of Flame Leviathan can be controlled based on which towers you leave up. Towers are easily identifiable because of the color of their glow. Location of the towers are shown in the map above. Use your vehicles to bring them down.

Storm beacons will summon additional units. Destroy them to stem the tide of incoming spawning mobs.

Roles and vehicular abilities

There are different roles that each vehicle plays. I’ll break them down below.

Carrying capacities

Chopper: 1 driver + 1 passenger
Demolisher: 1 driver + 2 passengers
Siege engine: 1 driver + 1 turret + 2 passengers

Chopper abilities

Sonic horn (20 energy): Conical DPS within 35 yards to all enemies
Tar: 10 yard pool of tar that slows down enemies by 75% (important)
Speed boost (50 energy): Increases vehicle’s movement speed by 100% for 5s

Demolisher abilities

Driver

Hurl boulder: Throws a really big rock at variable range. Think Wintergrasp or Strands type. Ignites Tar upon impact.
Hurl pyrite barrel: Using 5 pyrite, will do ~30000 damage
Ram: Damage and knockback effect
Throw passenger: Used only when the passenger is in the catapult. Dwarf tossing is finally a reality (important)

Passenger

Cannon: Fires a missile. Upon impact, deals damage to enemies within 10 yards. 50 yard range.
Grab crate: Uses a hook and chain to grab crates. Lets you pick up pyrite off the ground.
Increase speed: Uses pyrite to add extra speed to the demolisher. Lasts 1 minute.
Load into catapult: Self explanatory. Passenger gets into the catapult. (important)

Siege engine abilities

Driver

Ram (40 energy): Damage and knock back effect
Electroshock (38 energy): 25 yard conical, interrupts spells, and 4 seconds of locking out the magic school (important)
Steam Rush (40 energy): Sort of like a sprint effect.

Turret

Anti-Air launcher (10 energy): Fires missiles at aerial targets.
Cannon (20 energy): Up to 70 yard range. It’s a gun that shoots stuff.

Siege Engines

The Flame Leviathan will only lock on to one siege engine at a team. The targeted engine must kite the boss around.

Non-kiting siege engines will have to stay close to the rear of the Leviathan as much as possible and should interrupt Flame Jets. After 30 seconds, Flame Leviathan will switch and target a different Siege Engine and chase after that. Use Steam Rush to build up some distance.

Here’s a kite path you can try out.

Blue line: Opening route. The boss will be weapons free at this time (as in engage-able).

Siege engine passengers should be targeting pyrite ammo that’s floating in the air. If there aren’t any available, switch fire to the boss.

If you’re out of siege engines, FL will go after demolishers or choppers.

Choppers

There should be 1 chopper following the targeted siege engine. Choppers will be laying down tar directly in front of the Flame Leviathan to slow him down and the tar can be ignited by Boulders from demolishers.

Choppers also have to extract the FL Unit (explained further).

Demolishers

Stay as far away as you can. DPS with Hurl Boulder. Firing Pyrite Barrels should be held off until FL is stunned.

Demo passengers not being thrown up will need to work the catapult to load up Pyrite.

Flame Leviathan stun unit

Your demolishers have the capability to launch players onto the Flame Leviathan. The FL unit is going to comprise of:

• 3 DPS (Suggest Druid, Death Knight, Rogue)
• 1 Healer (Suggest Paladin or Druid)

I suggested those classes because they’re going to be under fire from various guns while up there. You’ll want maximum survivability.

Both players must be in the passenger seat of the demolisher. There’s an ability called “Load into Catapult” which places them in the throwing arm of the demo as a projectile. When it’s called for, your demo’s close in. The driver then hits “Throw passenger” which launches the passengers on top of the Flame Leviathan.

When the FL unit is on the back of the boss, they will be able to take out all 4 turrets. When the turrets explode, there’s a button. You hit the button which starts a 10 second channel resulting in a stunned boss and a damage taken by Flame Leviathan by 50% and resetting his speed.

The FL unit will then be ejected and parachuted off the boss. Your choppers must swoop in and extract them back to the demolishers. You’ll want to stun Leviathan while he’s in a tar’d area.

Video

For a visual “how to”, see this video below. Actual encounter starts around 20 seconds or so in. Note the positioning of siege engines and how the tar is laid out.

Healer drops

Heroic

Constructor’s Handwraps – Cloth gloves

Embrace of the Leviathan – Cloth belt

Freya’s Choker of Warding – Necklace

Glowing Ring of Reclamation – Ring

Steamcaller’s Totem – Ranged slot

Steamworker’s Goggles – Mail Helm

Boots of Fiery Resolution – Cloth feet – (Hard mode only)

Shoulderpads of Dormant Energies – Leather shoulders – (Hard mode only)

*** SPOILER*** Missed Dungeons and Raids? Screenshots if You Want to See Them

Mark this post as read if you want to remain in the dark.

For every one else, I had the screenshots in my library for quite a while.

It’s no fun listening to audio streams and listening to “Oohs”, “Ahhs”, and applause without getting to see it.

Check out the last shot, too. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mentioned that yet before. I found it interesting.

So here’s a few shots of Eye of Eternity, Obsidian Sanctum, Halls of Lightning, and Storm Peaks

Left: Here’s a shot of Malygos in his humble abode. The raid instance is literally a giant disc with Malygos flying around until you activate him. It’s a 3 phase encounter. I haven’t successfully completed him yet so I can’t offer much at this time.

Right: Me in my awesome attempt to try and do something. Alas, Malygos is overpowered and promptly kills us a matter of minutes.

Left: This is a shot of Obsidian Sanctum. Here is a shot of the party engaging the mini-bosses.

Right: You’ll notice the phasing mechanic put in play. Even though it “looks” the same, I get thrown into a different dimension. Here, I have to kill that shifted drake along with the Rogue or else something bad happens. I don’t actually know what.

Left: We’re taking on Sartharion. The guy hits like a pansy. For the raiders, take a good look at positioning in terms of tank, boss, and group. There’s a good reason for it.

Right: … Because every so often, a big wall of fire is going to rake the island that we’re on. Notice there’s a hole. Right when the wall warning occurs, the entire raid needs to ensure they’re in one of the two “safe zones” (on the left and on the right, by his tail, if you look carefully). If you eat the fire, you get knocked back and take a non-pansyish amount of damage.

Left: One of the old guys, I think. Wouldn’t dare hit a Dwarven brotha’ from anotha’ motha’. But I don’t dare test out my hypothesis.

Right: Another shot of the exterior. Place looks b-e-a-utiful.

Left: Interior shot of Halls of Lightning. See those Dwarves on the left? It’s the Terra Dwarva army, baby!

Right: The roving boss that was mentioned in the D & R panel is this guy. We decided to set him up in the corner. There’s me with the lightning debuff (Pro tip: When you get it, don’t move. Trust me.)

Left: Lastly, check out this interesting shot. It’s right after a wipe and after I released spirit. When you died in Tempest Keep, you’d automatically res to full health and life outside. But if you die out in the Halls, you seem to res in spirit form while mounted on Ghostly Gryphon.

Healing Naxxramas – Thaddius (10 man)

Thaddius is the idiot check boss of Naxx. There might be others (wait ‘til I get to Heigan), but I do think this one really separates those that can and those that can’t. You’ll find out why momentarily (but keep the first boss of Heroic Mechanar at the back of your mind).

Engage

When you enter the room, you have to engage two mini bosses before you can engage Thaddius. Fuegen and Stalagg need to go down together within seconds of the other dying. Unlike the original Naxx, you don’t have to stack melee players on one side and range on the other. The raid needs to be split fairly equally with 5 on one side and 5 on the other. It’s going to be hard to do with 5 total DPS (assuming 2 tanks and 3 healers) so I recommend pairing your top 2 DPS players together and the bottom 3 DPS players together. If necessary, adjust on the fly and rotate a DPS from one side to the other to help play catch up.

The two tanks (literally) will fly back and forth and switch between Fuegen and Stalagg respectively. I think when the Tesla Coil portion of the fight activates, the tank switches. Healers have to be aware of which tank is presently on the side that they are on. I suggest using a range finder of some sort. Aggro shouldn’t be a problem. One healer on both sides should be enough (although you’ll have an extra one, so use your discretion there). AoE healing will be the order of the day. Try to ensure everyone is near full as much as possible.

Once you kill the 2 constructs, here’s the challenging part. You have to run and actually jump from the ledge onto the platform below! If you decide to fall off, then you’ll miss the platform entirely and hit the sludge water below (just turn around and head towards the entrance as there is a ramp that will allow you to try again).

Now you’re onto Thaddius himself.

He uses an ability called Polarity Shift.

• Polarity Shift: Places either a Negative Charge or Positive Charge to all nearby enemy targets. Players near other players with the same Charge type increases each their damage dealt. Players near other players with the opposite Charge type deal damage to nearby raid members.

And that right there is the gimmick for the fight. I like to designate left side as positive and right side for negative. You don’t have to stray too far out. Melee players with opposite charges can remain 180° from each other and still stay within striking range of the boss.

Your raid leader should be extremely vocal:

“Polarity shift soon!”

“Polarity shift, MOVE MOVE MOVE!”

Some players fail at checking their debuffs and can potentially wipe the raid. As the raid leader, I strongly recommend that you hold their hand through this as it is not worth the frustration.

Healing

Healing is a walkover on this boss. AoE heals and single target heals on the tank should the order of the day. Your AoE healers will be able to cover both groups no matter which side they are on. Keep a single target healer on the tank at all costs. He does like to randomly fry players with lightning. It’s nothing a healer can’t handle, however.

One last thing

DO NOT LOOT YOUR ITEMS AFTER THE BOSS DIES! Wait for your charges to wear off before doing so or else you’ll be in for a very nasty (and shocking) surprise.

Healing Naxxramas – Grobbulus (10 man)

Welcome to Grobbulus! You’’ll run into him right after Patchwerk in the Abomination wing. Once the room’s been cleared out, get ready to grab Grobby!

Abilities

He puts a disease on players at random called Mutating Injection. It’s very important that it does not get dispelled! There’s a boss in Blood Furnace (the big floating Eye) that drops poison clouds all around the room. This boss also drops poison clouds. If the disease on you gets dispelled or if it wears off, then you drop a poison cloud.

Slime Spray is another ability of his which hits for a decent sized amount. Any players who are affected will spawn slimes. DPS needs to kill slimes when they spawn!

• Poison Cloud: Deals a moderate amount of damage

So how do you handle it?

The Process

Tell your tank to pull Grobby in a clockwise direction. Don’t move him too fast. You don’t want to rush him around because it takes time for poison clouds to wear off.

Your DPS and healers will be standing in the middle and shooting outwards. Melee players will be standing behind Grobby as he is being tanked. Don’t forget to kill Slimes as they spawn!

If you get hit with a Mutating Injection, run and stay behind Grobbulus until it wears off. The main idea here is to keep the poison clouds on the exterior of the room thereby leaving the middle area relatively clean. Once diseased players are in a safe position, then all you need to do is Cleanse or Dispel them. The debuff will wear off and a poison cloud will expand where they were standing. Make sure they run back after the debuff wears off.

Healing

I suggest using a 2 healer on tank, 1 on raid setup. Grobbulus does not hit really hard and the damage should be manageable. The concern here is the amount of players absorbing AoE damage from Poison clouds. As long as they are alert and aware of where they are relative to the clouds, they should have no major issues.

Other Notes

Grobbulus’ abilities are Nature based. Consider using Aspect of the Wild or other Nature Resistance abilities (Totems?). I do not know how effective using the resist is but it could help the raid stay alive longer than normal and buy more time. I haven’t had a chance to test Nature Resist. But it isn’t a necessity.

Healing Naxxramas – Grand Widow Faerlina (10 man)

Faerlina is the second boss you’ll run into within the Arachnid quarter (Spider wing). She is flanked by 4 mobs. Do not kill them all at once. They need to be tanked in the side or just let loose running around.

Abilities

Faerlina will go into a Frenzy after every minute has elapsed from the last dispel (or a minute after the fight begins). She will hit the tank extremely hard and he will not be able to survive for more than a few seconds. The only way to dispel Frenzy is to bring one of her mobs on top of her and kill it. Only then can the effect be dispelled.

Stay mobile and keep moving. Watch out for Rain of Fire.

So there’s a two stage encounter. The first stage is a simple tank and spank while keeping the mobs away from her. They are absolutely needed in order to remove frenzy. If you kill one by accident, then the time you have to kill her goes down. You can DPS them but don’t over do it. I suggest using mild AoE to bring them down to approximately 20% or single targeting them.

In this case, notice how we established icons on all of the different mobs. We did it so we could coordinate the kill order (“Triangle first, move square out, ease off of X”).

Healing

One healer on the main tank, one healer on the raid, the last one floats. The moment she goes into a frenzy, drop everything you’re doing and get on the MT right away. Priests, use mitigation spells as quick as you can. Actually, I’d advise your tank to use one of his panic buttons (trinket, talent, skill, whatever) right away until they get the hang of this fight.

After that, repeat what you just did. Wait until she frenzies, drag a mob over, kill it. Rinse, repeat.

However, you are on the clock. Once the last mob dies and she enrages there is no way for you to dispel it. When I did it, she went down between number 3 and number 4.

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