Blue confirms Ulduar nerf strategy

Daelo over at the Raid and Dungeon forum says: "We want to allow additional players to experience more of the cool Ulduar content."

That pretty much confirms the strategy that Blizzard has to nerf Ulduar already after two weeks of playing. And the nerfs are very noticable.

We started a new Ulduar run yesterday, and one-shotted Flame Leviathan, XT-002, and Kologarn, and downed Auriaya after a wipe due to a bad pull. All that took just over an hour. Then we spent the next two and a half hours wiping on Thorim... But my point is: Already two weeks into the new content, some of the bosses have been nerfed so much they are no longer a challenge.

It's now obvious that Blizzard will keep nerfing Ulduar so that "everybody" will be able to see all the content on normal difficulty, but that the hardmode fights are aimed at the more hardcore raiders, and will thus be tuned thereafter.

Freya down

My guild downed Freya for the first time yesterday, in my absense. Our 10-man group has downed all but two bosses in Ulduar.
Since Guardians of Destiny isn't a hardcore raiding guild, I wonder how the hardcore raiders feel about Ulduar. Do they think it's too easy?

I can't really rate Ulduar yet myself. It's a bigger challenge than Naxx (but so is crossing the street or brushing your teeth), but we manage do down bosses after just a handful of attempts. In TBC, we wiped for weeks in Black Temple to progress, and when we started SSC and TK, wipe nights were more of a standard than an exception.
Is Ulduar easier for us because we are better players now? Or is Ulduar tuned down to make progress easier for the larger population?

Some of the bosses get nerfed every week. Ignis is the perfect example. First day, he was close to impossible. Hotfix after hotfix has nerfed him to the ground, and now he is not much of a challenge. Is Blizzard afraid of losing players if the bosses are "too hard"?

We haven't reached Mimiron in our 25-man yet, but I know our 10-man group wiped a lot before downing him. I've heard hardcore raiders say he is the first "hard" boss in the instance. That's why I don't want to rate the difficulty of Ulduar just yet. I need to see all the boss fights before I can compare to our previous experiences. At least Ulduar isn't the "free epics" Naxx was.

Seal of Command

As my secondary spec, I use 0/17/54. I'm not very happy about all the points that are spent on less useful things, but the retribution tree today is so slim-downed that you always end up with lots of left-over points. An "interesting" point is that I haven't bothered picking up Seal of Command.

According to the statistics on Quick Armory, only 59% of the retribution paladins are speccing into Seal of Command. This used to be the staple talent in the retribution tree, and in vanilla WoW, it was THE damage seal. Today, you do more damage with Seal of Blood/Martyr, and Seal of Command is only used in PvP or in fights where the damage recoil of Seal of Blood/Martyr is a problem. As it is now, Blizzard could just remove Seal of Command altogether from the game, and only a few would mourn the loss. I would like to see a change to the seal, so that it atleast is a viable alternative to Seal of Blood/Martyr.

Looking at more statistics on Quick Armory, I see that 2% of the tankadins have specced into Seal of Command. Why on Earth would you do that? For threat and damage, the seals of Vengeance, Blood/Martyr, and even Righteousness are better. In addition, since Seal of Command is a "proc per minute" seal, the damage, and thus threat, is spikey and unreliable.
It also seems like 6% spec into Vindication, and 1% into Eye for an Eye, so maybe the people who spec into these three talents are PvP protection paladins.

I like playing as retribution, but I think Blizzard needs to redesign Seal of Command and/or Seal of Blood/Martyr (the recoil makes even less sense now when Spiritual Attunement has become a protection-only talent), and also add some more useful things into the retribution tree (or in the other trees, as long as it has synergies with the retribution talents).

Hot Pockets and the Ice Cream Man

Ignis (first kill), Razorscale (second), and Hodir (first kill) downed in yesterday's raid.

We decided to kill Ignis, because he has been killing us so many times before. We changed tactics and just nuked him, ignoring the adds altogether. I tanked Mr Hot Pockets in the water, so that the scorch was neutralized, and all dps just went full out on him. We wiped a few times due to damage on me being too high at the same time as some healers dying to adds. But this tactics was loads easier than what we tried before, and he soon went down.

After the Ignis kill, Razorscale was just a formality. Don't want to leave any boss standing behind us in the instance :)

The Hodir fight was easy. I put on some frost resistance gear and solo tanked him the entire fight. Our first attempts failed due to people not standing where they should. The enrage timer seemed pretty tight at first, until we started utilizing the NPCs better. Then the fight was a cake walk. The Ice Cream Man went down!

Crazy Old Cat Lady

On our Friday's run, we downed Auriaya for the first time.

The hardest part of this fight is the pull itself. The crazy old cat lady is patroling the area with her four cats. When engaged, the four kitties pounce the aggro target, and since they all buff eachother by increasing their fellow kitty cats' damage with 50% each (for a total of 200% extra damage when all four are close to eachother), they will quickly kill anybody in their way.

The idea is to make sure nobody is in the line of sight for the cats, so that they cannot pounce a single target to death. So we all hid behind a pillar and let the death knight tank put down a Death and Decay on the ground in front of the boss when she came strolling up some stairs with her cats. When the boss and her feline friends came running around that pillar to gank the death knight, the other two tanks (including yours truly) picked up the boss and a few of the cats.

Since they were still stacked, the cats still made some serious damage, so using survivability cooldowns were necessary. I pre-popped Holy Shield, Sacred Shield, Divine Plea (glyphed), and Divine Protection when I picked up two or three of the adds.

We had several wipes due to bad pulls, or tanks dying in the first couple of seconds in the fight. When we finally got that part of the fight in place, the rest of the fight was not that bad. She spawns mini-adds that I picked up with consecration, she spawns a bigger cat that is untankable and leaves a nasty void zone when dying, she fears, and she does a real nasty AoE damage attack (that thankfully can be interrupted).

When the cat lady where down, we continued to Hodir for a quick attempt before the raid finished. It was a wipe, but now we know what the fight looks like.

During the run I got my first Ulduar loot: Greaves of the Stonewarder. When I replaced my previous boots (Kyzoc's Ground Stompers), I gained some armor, strength, stamina, and block value, but I lost quite a chunk of avoidance. I'll keep my old shoes in my bags for a while.

Return to Ulduar

Last night we downed Kologarn after a couple of attempts. It is a pretty straight-forward fight that for some reason cost us several wipes on our last visit here (until he bugged and decided not to come back). I was assigned to the adds that spawn when his arm is killed. That job was easy except for the times when I got gripped just before the arm died, which meant I was thrown to the other side of the room when the adds spawned, and didn't have the time to run back before the adds were all over the raid.

We then returned to Ignis. This boss has been nerfed a lot since last week, but we still could only get him down to about 30%. We are mostly having problems with the adds ganking healers and not getting killed fast enough.

I have been main tanking Ignis himself on our tries so far. I kite him around the raid who stand in the middle of the room, making sure Ignis is facing away from the raid at all times. I make sure he puts down scorches close to the water before I move him to the next spot. The adds tanks try to kite the adds thru the fire to melt them and then into the water to make them brittle.

Tonight, we will go for Auriaya, Hodir, and more tries on Ignis.

Ulduar Day 4

After some mean trash we stood before the Assembly of Iron.
I tanked the big dude, Steelbreaker, which also was our first kill target. For the first time in ages, I had to use my wings to keep ahead on threat when the DPSers got the damage boost from the blue runes on the floor. Second kill target was Runemaster Molgeim. Easy rule here: stand in blue stuff, but don't stand in green stuff. Third kill target was Stormcaller Brundir. Since he wipes his aggro table after every air phase, I ended up tanking him most of the remainder of the fight as well.

We only needed a few tries on this group of bosses before they went down. This was a pretty easy and straightforward fight.

Next, we moved to Kologarn. I was assigned to tank the adds that spawns when his arm is killed. We had loads of wipes on this boss. His Grip, his Breath, and his Eye Beam all caused deaths.
Just when we were getting warm and had him below 30%, the dude bugs on us and doesn't respawn.
End of raid.

So the first week we had four days in Ulduar, and we downed four bosses. I'm already looking forward to next week.

Oh, and I got my Glyph of Divine Plea. Some guy was selling it for 150 gold at the AH.

Spec and mana in 3.1

I went with a 0/53/18 spec in 3.1. To get full Crusade, I had to skip one point in Spiritual Attunement. This had been proven in theory to be enough by the mathematically gifted tankadins in the world.
After a couple of days of raiding in Ulduar, I can say that mana is not an issue at that difficulty level. The mobs in Ulduar hit hard, so that one point in Spiritual Attunement is well enough.

Whenever I see my mana getting lower than I like, I start Divine Plea. With the new changes to the prot talent Guarded by the Light, Divine Plea is up constantly as long as you hit something. This works wonders when offtanking, which earlier had been a problem for tankadins. I can now go full out as an offtank and still have mana to spare. Very nice.

I haven't tanked any 5-man heroics since the patch, so I can't say how well mana regen works in those environments. But I assume that if mana shows to be a problem, the easiest solution is to pull more mobs, or just sit down and take some extra hits. Those tricks most tankadins are used to since TBC anyway.

So far I am happy with my new spec. I finally got the points to put into Pursuit of Justice, and the extra damage and crit makes me a happy pally :)

However, I still haven't found that darn Glyph of Divine Plea...

Ulduar Day 3

This time we decided to beat on a robot with a squeeky voice and some broken toys: XT-002 Deconstructor.

I was tanking all the Pummelers (the big adds), which turned out to be a fun role. Before the first adds spawned in the fight, I also used the new ability Divine Sacrifice for the first time during the raid wide AoE spell Tympanic Tantrum.

We wiped most of the night, with a handful of attempts landing below 3% (worst wipe was the one where the boss had 100k health left...)
In the end, the robot went down, and we got ourselves a nice achievement, since nobody died to any bombs.

The paladin healing bracers dropped, and they were a let-down. My bracers from Naxx-25 is alot better. What is Blizzard thinking with the holy itemization on gear?

Ulduar Day 2

This time the servers stayed up. After a handful of wipes we downed Razorscale. This is a really fun fight. We split up the area in three slices and let the three tanks handle the adds spawning in those areas. DPS were also split up in groups. When Razorscale herself lands permanently, we took turns tanking her to avoid too many stacks of the debuff she puts on the tank.

Towards the end it got a bit messy, but she went down with only a few dead in the raid.
The tanking gun dropped, and we didn't even have a warrior tank with us...

We then turned our attention to Ignis. Oh man, does he hit hard. We spent the rest of the night wiping on this dude. I don't think I have died that fast to any boss before when main tanking. This fight is ridiculously hard.

We'll be aiming for XT-002 tomorrow.

Ulduar Day 1

After getting my dual spec in place and sorting my addons out, it was time for Heroic Ulduar.

We zone in and one-shotted the Flame Leviathan. That boss is very easy when done in "easy mode", I guess we will try it with towers up next time. Then we move on to Razorscale since that boss has less trash. We wipe twice (damn those adds hit hard and never die) and then the instance server decides to take a nose dive. Raid over.

Noticed a blue post stating that they will nerf the damage and hit points of those adds. Guess that will make my job easier :)

Now I only have to find someone to make me that Glyph of Divine Plea....

Prepared for Ulduar!

The patch will be upon us this week or next, and I was cleaning out my closet in preparation. The following tanking gear will be what I bring to the coming raids:

Head
Primary: Helm of Vital Protection
Secondary: Tempered Titansteel Helm (for stamina set)

Neck
Primary: Nexus War Champion Beads
Secondary: Heritage (avoidance or threat set)

Shoulders
Valorous Redemption Shoulderguards

Cloak
Primary: Cloak of the Shadowed Sun
Secondary: Platinum Mesh Cloak (avoidance or threat set)

Chest
Primary: Dragonstorm Breastplate
Secondary: Valorous Redemption Breastplate (for Power Ranger look)

Wrists
Bindings of the Hapless Prey
(Still missing the Bracers of the Unholy Knight)

Hands
Valorous Redemption Handguards

Waist
Ablative Chitin Girdle

Legs
Primary: Valorous Redemption Legguards
Secondary: Dragon Brood Legguards (threat set)
(Still missing Legplates of Sovereignty)

Feet
Primary: Kyzoc's Ground Stompers
Secondary: Inexorable Sabatons (threat or block set)

Rings
Primary: Sand-Worn Band and Signet of the Impregnable Fortress
Secondary: Keystone Great-Ring (EH set)

Trinkets
Primary: Repelling Charge and Essence of Gossamer
Secondary: Defender's Code (EH set), Valor Medal of the First War (avoidance set), Rune of Repulsion (avoidance set)

Shield
Primary: Wall of Terror (stamina will be buffed on this, making it the primary shield)
Secondary: Hero's Surrender (avoidance set)

Weapon
Last Laugh

Pretty mount

Yesterday we did Sartharion with 3 drakes up again. We tried a different tactic this time, with a void walker tanking Sartharion. It went very well, and it only took us a couple of tries to get the drakes down and commense the looting.

And I got the Twilight Drake!