Did 3.2 Kill Serious Raiding?

Now you probably wonder what in the world I'm talking about. Why would a content patch like 3.2 kill serious raiding? We've gotten even more raid instances to raid! Have I lost my mind?

Well, for our guild, the 3.2 patch killed serious raiding. With "serious raiding" I mean several raid nights a week spent on hard content, many wipes, high repair costs, grinding teeth, and adrenaline pumping.

Since Trial of the Crusader was introduced, our guild can't seem to get enough sign-ups for Ulduar. This is a shame, since we have so much left undone in there. We have several hard modes left, and thus we are very very far off from even seeing Algalon.

It's understandable that people aren't interested in wiping in Ulduar when they can easily farm Trial of the Crusader for shinier epics.

OK. So all this QQ about lack of serious raiding must mean that we have Trial of the Grand Crusader on farm as well, right? Well, no. We are still stuck on Northrend Beasts in TotGC-25. We always seem to lack the dps to kill off the last worm before Icehowl enters the arena. The reasons for lacking dps are two: Gear and people dying when they shouldn't.

So to increase our chances to progress we farm. On Wednesdays we do Onyxia-25, VoA-25, and TotC-25. That usually takes about 1.5 hour. After that we try TotGC-25 for a couple of hours. This means that the guild's entire 25-man raiding takes place in one night.

Later in the week the guild has several TotC-10 runs, and a couple of TotGC-10 runs. Farm. Farm. Farm. We actually farm 10-man content to be able to progress in 25-man content. Is it just me who thinks that is a bit awkward?

In a normal week, I do TotC-25, TotC-10, TotGC-10, and some tries on TotGC-25 on my paladin. I also do TotC-10 and TotC-25 on my shaman. Just guess how tired I am of farming that frigging coliseum? I'm killing the same stinking bosses five times a week! And they fall over easier than a twenty-dollar hooker.

Some people seem to be content with this. Farming easy instances to get shiny epics? What's not to like? Getting big upgrades to your gear without the risk of dying? Sweet!

And while people roll around in the purples from Coliseum, Ulduar is empty and unfinished.

Looking forward, at least Icecrown Citadel is more than one room.....

Northrend Beasts (and a bugged XT)

The first fight in the new raid instance is a three phase fight, where you encounter three different beasts.

First off is Gormok the Impaler. He's your ordinary neighbourhood magnataur. And he impales people. But overall, he's not a scary guy. There are basically three things to look out for:

• Staggering Stomp does some AoE damage, so make sure to have ranged people at max range.
• Impale puts a nasty bleed debuff on the tank. It stacks, so at 3 or so stacks, you should switch tanks until the debuff falls off.
• Snobold Vassal is some annoying mob that sit on people's shoulders and stops them from doing anything useful. They need to be killed immediately.

As soon as Gormok goes down, the next phase starts and two big worms enter the arena: Acidmaw and Dreadscale. Acidmaw is greenish and has poison attacks, and Dreadscale is redish and has fire attacks. One of the worms are stationary while the other roams around. Every now and then, they switch places, so that the roaming one is stationary while the other starts moving.
There are two things to look out for:

• They both do a frontal cone attack (fire or poison) so the tank needs to tank them facing away from the raid.
• Acidmaw applies a Paralytic Toxin which makes the target immobile after some time. Only way to get rid of this is to get close to someone who has the fire debuff from the other worm.
  

I was tanking Acidmaw. When he was stationary, it's just full nukage since we wanted to kill him off first (due to the Paralytic Toxin, which we wouldn't be able to get rid of if we killed the other worm first). When he was moving, I kited him around the room, since he leaves behind a Grobbulus-like poison cloud.

Whenever I got the Paralytic Toxin, the two tanks moved closer to eachother, so that the toxin would be neutralized by the fire debuff from the other tank. If I had my bubble off cooldown, I just used that to get rid of the toxin. I love being a paladin :)

And remember that the worms do an aggro reset when they switch. We had some dpsers who learned that the hard way...

When the two worms bite the dust, the third and final phase starts as Icehowl enters the arena. He is a big, hairy, and angry wendigo. There are a couple of things to look out for:

• Ferocious Butt is a hard hit which also stuns for 3 seconds.
• Arctic Breath is a frontal cone attack that freezes the targets and deals damage over time.
• Whirl is an AoE attack with a knockback effect.
• Massive Crash is where the fun starts. He jumps into the air, lands in the middle of the room and, knocks everybody back and stuns them. Then he glares at a raid member and then charges him. The target needs to move out FAST. If Icehowl misses his target he crashes into the wall and is stunned for some time. However, if Icehowl hits his target, that person dies and Icehowl gains the effect next on the list:
  
• Frothing Rage is a damage and attack speed increase of 50%.

We had some trouble with people not moving out of his way when he charged them, which lead to an even angrier wendigo which then slaughtered the poor tank.

Other than that, this fight is not hard. I tanked him with my back against a wall so that his frontal cone attack and knockbacks had little effect. Since there is an early warning on who he will charge, there should be no problem in moving out. Blizzard has even given the target a temporary movement speed buff which makes it even easier.

Northrend Beasts is an easy encounter, at least on 25 man normal mode.

The loot gods where good to me, and I got myself the Chestplate of the Towering Monstrosity and a Tier 9 token (Trophy of the Crusade). Now I just have to figure out how to use it...

When we were finished at the Coliseum, we went to Ulduar, where we got a nasty surprise.

XT is bugged to oblivion. There are MILLIONS of adds coming, and light bombs and gravity bombs being applied even during the Tantrums. A fight that usually takes about three minutes took us close to nine minutes. Since there were so many adds, the dps on XT himself was low, and I noticed on Omen that I had a 60% threat lead on the closest dps. This fight needs to be hotfixed ASAP.

We cleared all the way to Freya before calling it a night.

Heroic Heartbreaker

After (finally) killing Yogg-Saron, we could start concentrating on the hard modes in Ulduar.
First on the list was Heartbreaker. I've already made a post on this for when we did it on 10 man, and XT has the same extra abilities on 25-man. He just hits harder and has more health.

I was tanking XT against one of the walls, so that adds wouldn't spawn from the junk piles on that wall. The other tank took care of Pummelers until hard mode was engaged, and after that he was picking up Life Sparks. Since I was tanking the boss against a wall, all I could see was a pair of giant robot legs.

We had a few wipes due to lack of moving when people got the bombs, or people getting killed by XT's tantrum. The healers really have their work cut out for them, and to ease their job, we made one of the shadow priests respec holy.

Eventually, XT was downed and our first hard mode loot was given to our hunter GM. That darn robot didn't drop the sweet tanking mace this time, and since Flame Leviathan refuses to drop Titanguard, I'm still stuck with Last Laugh.

On our Hodir kill for the night, I solo-tanked him without any frost resistance gear for the first time. I didn't really notice any difference in damage intake, but I loved to see my threat look better than with all that resistance gear.

Yogg-Saron down

After several weeks of weak signups, we finally got a solid group together so that we could do some serious attempts on Yogg-Saron. After only a few attempts we downed him (after a 2% wipe on our second attempt for the night).


This kill felt very good. Yogg-Saron has felt like a road block for some time now, especially seeing how me burned through the rest of Ulduar without any real problems (Mimiron was probably the second hardest kill, and after all the nerfs to him, that fight is now cake walk).

I just had to include the achievement we did just before the Ulduar raid. To get our spirits up, we did an Alterac Valley Blitz before entering Ulduar. I guess it helped :)

How To: A Tankadin Guide to Yogg-Saron

The Yogg-Saron fight has three phases, and the tankadin tasks for each are a bit different.

Phase 1:
In this phase, you need to kill guardians, which spawn from moving clouds, close to Sara until she dies (she takes about 12% of her health in damage per killed guardian).
We usually have three tanks (or two tanks plus a dps warrior or death knight in defensive stance/frost presence). The raid is positioned close to the entrance. The two main tanks pick up guardians and tank them close to the raid until their health is low. Then the guardians are kited close to Sara where a small group of ranged dpsers finish them off. As soon as a guardian is dead, the tank runs back to the raid to pick up a new guardian. The third (off) tank is picking up lose guardians and holds them away from the healers until one of the main tanks picks them up.
Things to look out for: Stepping in the clouds will make an extra guardian spawn, and if too many of them are up at the same time, the raid risks to be overrun by them.

Phase 2:
Tentacle time! Yogg-Saron appears in the center of the room and three kinds of tentacles spawn. Portals will open, letting raid members enter Yoggie's sick, perverted mind. The phase will end when Yogg-Saron's brain has taken enough damage from the people inside his mind.
However, a tankadin is more useful outside, so you won't be going into the portals.
As mentioned, there are three types of tentacles spawning outside.

• The Crushers channel a nasty debuff called Diminish Power, which reduces the damage the raid does with 20%. It stacks up to 4 times if you have 4 Crushers up (which is a REALLY bad idea). The channeling can be interrupted by hitting it with a melee attack. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the Crusher also gets a stacking buff called Focused Anger everytime it is hit that increases damage done by 3%. This buff can stack up to 99 times. This makes it impossible to tank the tentacle, since it will one-shot anything with 40 or so stacks of the buff. The tankadin thus needs to "joust", i.e. run in, hit it, and quickly run out. Try to avoid getting more than 30 stacks of Focused Anger, so that the tanks don't risk dying.
• The Constrictors Squeeze raid members. When being squeezed, one takes 7500 damage every second. Only way to get people out of Squeeze is to kill the Constrictor. As a tankadin, you can bubble your way out of this. You can also use Hand of Protection on someone else who is squeezed. Save your HoP for a melee that needs to enter a portal, or for someone who otherwise would die.
  
• The Corruptors spread four kinds of debuffs: a magic one, a curse, a disease, and a poison. Help the healers to cleanse these, especially the mana-draining poison.
  

The tankadin's duties in phase 2 are to joust the Crushers to interrupt Diminsh Power, cleanse the debuffs from the Corruptors, and help people get out of the Constrictors' Squeeze (either by killing the tentacle or using Hand of Protection).
Things to look out for: Your Sanity might take some hits due to Brain Link, Malady of the Mind, and Psychosis. Make sure to refresh your Sanity at one of the Sanity Wells, because if your Sanity hits zero, you are mind controlled for the rest of the fight (and your raid will mock you for it when they kill you).

Phase 3:
In the third phase the ranged memebers of the raid will dps Yogg-Saron. The melee dps will spend their time killing off the Immortal Guardians that spawn every 10 seconds. These guardians hit very hard at full health (they will one-shot everything except the tanks), but hit like a smurf when low on health. The guardians should be tanked at least 20 yards away from Yogg-Saron since he casts Empowering Shadows on random guardians, and letting Yoggie heal himself is a bad tactic.
Yogg-Saron also casts Lunatic Gaze every 12 seconds. All raid members must face away from Yogg-Saron when this is being cast.
We bunch all the raid up away from Yogg-Saron, preferrably close to a Sanity Well. All healers face away from Yogg-Saron during the entire fight. We use two tanks: one to pick up the spawning adds before they kill someone, and one to tank them until they are at 1% health (when Thorim will kill them off). Melee dps single targets the guardians to burn them down as fast as possible, since they hit so hard at full health.
As a tankadin, you can either be the tank picking up spawning adds with your many ranged pick-up tools (Exorcism, Avenger's Shield, Hand of Reckoning, Righteous Defense, Judgement), or you could AoE tank the adds while spamming Righteous Defense on your fellow tank, to keep all adds on you until they die.
Things to look out for: Again, keep an eye on your Sanity.

It is an intense and long fight where simple mistakes will make the encounter very difficult.

Good luck!

Heartbreaker

Some of us put together an ad hoc 10-man group yesterday to try some hardmodes. Before one of our healers disconnected on Iron Council, we did the XT-002 hard mode kill.

The idea is to kill the heart on the first heart phase, which then starts the hard mode. Gravity Bombs will now leave nasty void zones on the ground, and Light Bombs will leave Life Sparks that deal nasty damage and needs to be nuked fast.

After some tries we realized that there were no more adds coming after hard mode had been engaged, which meant we didn't really need two tanks. I switched to retri, but kept my shield on at the beginning, so that I could tank adds at the start.

As soon as hard mode was started, we quickly nuked the remaining adds and I equipped my two-hander to help out with the dps. With an extra dps and the extra damage reduction provided by my Divine Sacrifice (which can't really be used while tanking adds), the girlish robot went down and we got our achievement.

Reaching Phase 3 on Yogg-Saron

After the Yogg-Saron nerfs (see below), we managed to get to phase 3 in the fight. So far, our best attempt is 20%, and it feels like the kill is not far away.

The latest Ulduar nerfs are:

• The Yogg-Saron encounter has received the following changes: Death Ray no longer hits players who are under the effect of Malady of the Mind, Guardians of Yogg-Saron no longer use Dominate Mind, the spawn rate of Guardians of Yogg-Saron is more forgiving, and these Guardians will no longer spawn if a player that is protected by Hodir’s Flash Freeze hits an Ominous Cloud.
  
• The Flame Leviathan encounter has received the following changes: the bonus health Flame Leviathan receives per tower has been reduced, the ejection height from Flame Leviathan has been reduced, the snare effect of the Tower of Frost has been removed, and the cannons on Demolishers and Siege Enginers should now break Flash Frozen vehicles in 1 shot.
  
• The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: the health of the heart has been slightly reduced in heroic difficulty and the rate at which Gravity Lapse and Searing Light are cast has been reduced.

We haven't done the Flame Leviathan on hard mode yet, so I don't really know the impact of those changes. The XT-002 fight was already easy, so the nerfs feels a bit unnecessary.

The removal of mind control from the Guardians makes the Yogg-Saron fight easier, especially for a tank. I hated having several of them on me and then suddenly seeing myself casting Hand of Protection on them and then go on to stun a fellow raider, losing all aggro on the mobs and seeing them turn to healers...

The change in spawn rate was noticable, since I realized I had Exorcism off cooldown when I needed it more often than before.

Now we just have to perfect phase 3...

Failure at General

On Thursday, we engaged Genral Vezax. This week we didn't have a death knight tank in the raid, and since I had successfully tanked the big squid on 10-man, I stepped up to the challenge to tank him.

It didn't go well at all.

The Surge of Darkness was not a problem. I used my bubble wall every other cast, and one of the priests used his cooldown every other cast. I was never even close on dying to the ability that should have been the biggest problem due to limited tankadin cooldowns.

Instead, it was the Searing Flames that got me killed. I had 43k health in the fight, which meant that I could survive two consectutive melee hits (Squid Face hits for around 20k on plate) if topped off. Due to lag, the assigned interrupters failed to interrupt Searing Flames a few times, which instantly lead to a wipe. The reason was the 75% reduction of armor on the tank, which meant that Squid Face could one-shot me.

After five wipes (due to four Searing Flames and one parry-gib), the Raid Leader brought in a death knight to tank, and I went retri for dps. The General went down on the first try.

Even though I agree that a death knight tank is better suited (i.e. has more tools to survive) to tank General Vezax, the comparison this time fails, since when the death knight stepped in, suddenly all the Searing Flames were interrupted, and the new tank didn't have to deal with losing 75% of his armor.

For future attempts (if I am ever allowed to tank Squid Face again), an additional cooldown needs to be assigned for when (or rather IF) the tank gets the Searing Flames debuff.

A Night in Ulduar-10

Last night we got an ad hoc group together to do some mob-whacking in 10-man Ulduar just for fun. We brought a mix of people, including some who had never been in Ulduar before.

Five hours later, General Vezax was dead and we went down to have a look at Yogg-Saron before we called it.

I'm quite surprised about the difference in difficulty between 10-man and 25-man Ulduar. 10-man Ulduar is a walk in the park; The mobs hardly make a dent in your armor, and the bosses have so little health they go down faster than a popsicle in Sahara.

We were running with me as main tank together with a feral druid. That meant we didn't have the imba cooldowns that a death knight tank has, but it didn't become a problem anyway. For Mimiron's Plasma Blasts, we had both tanks tank him in turn to use their individual cooldowns to survive in phase 1.

On General, I used my Divine Protection together with a priest's Guardian Spirit and a paladin's Hand of Sacrifice (since the priest didn't have his Guardian Spirit glyphed) to survive the Surge of Darkness.

Mana was a non-issue in the General fight as well, even though I only have 1 point in Spiritual Attunement. Every time my mana went below 50% I stopped using Consecration, and then my mana started going up again, thus allowing me to start using Consecration again.

It was a fun raid. Very relaxed compared to the 25-man raids. I passed on all the tanking gear that dropped (the off-spec tanks were happy about that), but picked up the Tier helm from Mimiron, so I could get the 2-piece bonus (I have the T8.5 skirt from Freya-25).

If you are wearing Naxx-25 gear, Ulduar-10 is a nice and easy way to learn the encounters before stepping it up to Ulduar-25.

Yogg-Saron

We spent several hours wiping on Mimiron this week, and this limited our time on Yogg-Saron. Next week, we really need to down that toy robot faster, so we have a chance to learn the Yogg-Saron encounter.

The Yogg-Saron fight is really messy. And we haven't even gotten past phase 2!

For phase 1, we position the raid close to the door. One tank, a healer, and some dps go into the center of the room. The first guardian is picked up by the center tank and killed. The second guardian is picked up by our kiting tank, whose job it is to move adds close to death to the center tank. When additional guardians spawn they are picked up by me, standing between the raid and the center tank group. I keep them on me and away from the healers until the kiting tank takes one of me to be dpsed, kited to the center, and killed.

We wiped several times due to dpsers being too eager to shoot at everything moving, which meant adds were running all over the place, and some even exploding in the raid. With some more practise, this phase will probably be over fast and easy. It is possible to speed it up by running into the clouds to get some more guardians at the same time.

For us, the second phase was chaotic to say the least. We didn't have enough time this week to practise on it, and we had to leave the encounter a bit overwhelmed by everything that was going on.

It really is en epic fight.

General down

Yup. General went down.

I did this fight as retri, since tankadins face potential mana issues (especially since I'm running with just 1/2 Spiritual Attunement). We started by using a warrior tank who kited the boss during the Surge of Darkness, but he ended up being killed early in every attempt. So we switched to a death knight tank who just tanked him where he stood and didn't move at all during the fight.

As retri, this fight is extremely simple. I don't have to interrupt the Searing Flames like the other melee classes, and I don't have to worry about mana since Judgement of the Wise is totally imba. I just stood behind the boss and nuked as hard as I could for about 4 minutes, and then the boss was dead.

I know the rest of the raid was running around looking for green puddles to get mana back, and the interrupters had a crucial task of interrupting the Searing Flames. I, on the other hand, just stood there and nuked.

We ran into Yogg-Saron's room to check him out and quickly wiped since people stood in clouds that spawned loads of adds. I was still in retri spec and found myself trying to kill the Guild Master while being mind controlled.

I think the Yogg-Saron fight will take some time to learn.

Keepers down

Yesterday, the little toy robot Mimiron went down, which meant we defeated all the Keepers after two visits this week. I watched the kill face down on the ground after dying to a rocket landing on my head. I claim that the distraction of having to roll over my dead body over and over again was the true reason for him going down.

After the kill, we cleared the remaining bosses (Ignis, Council) before moving on the our next target: General Vezax.

That's one ugly dude.

We had two attempts before we called it.

Afterwards, some of us started a 10-man Ulduar run. We one-shotted Leviathan, XT-002, Kologarn, and Auriaya and went on to Mimiron. We downed him once today... let's try it again!

I left the raid to get some sleep after two attempts, which both reached phase 4. I'm sure the rest of the people stayed a while to wreck havoc to the place.

Thorim loses a 1v25 Arena game

Yet again, my guild downed a new boss when I wasn't around. Last night they defeated Thorim after several nights of wipes on him. I'm gonna need to get the details of what was done differently this time around (except for me not being there...) to analyze how to tweak it even more for next week.

Mimiron is up next, but we will save that fight for next week.

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.

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.

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?