Ulduar hard modes

Basically, if we plan to do Algalon some day, here are the things we need to do. Keep in mind that some of them require raid to be fully geared and ready for some extraordinary efforts, but some are pretty doable with some more coordination:

In order to unlock Algalon, at least one raid member needs to have the questline completed. It involves following steps:

Completing I Choose You, Steelbreaker or I Choose You, Runemaster Molgeim (killing Council in non-easy mode) enables one Archivum Data Disc to drop. The quest from the disc directs the player to the Archivum, located beyond the Assembly of Iron.

Completing this enables four quests to obtain the Watchers' sigils, which may be performed in any order:
• Freya's Sigil - Complete Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood.
• Hodir's Sigil - Complete I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare.
• Mimiron's Sigil - Complete Firefighter.
• Thorim's Sigil - Complete Lose Your Illusion.
Completing all four quests enables the quest Algalon.

Apart from this, some other bosses also have hard modes which are doable and/or fun, and give either extra rewards or achievements required for Glory of the Ulduar Raider (310% drake). All those with note HARD MODE give extra and improved loot.

Here's a short overview of these (listing only the bosses we killed so far):

Flame Leviathan

All important achis about this guy are connected to the towers. We've already done him with 1, however I'd recommend skipping the mid-steps and going directly to 4 towers, ie. his real hard mode. Rewards are the following:

0: Normal Loot x2 + Emblem of Valor x1
1: Normal Loot x2 + Emblem of Conquest x2
2: Normal Loot x2 + Emblem of Conquest x2 + Recipe + Runed Orb
3: Normal Loot x2 + Emblem of Conquest x3 + Recipe + Runed Orb
4: Normal Loot x2 + Emblem of Conquest x3 + Recipe + Runed Orb + Hard Loot x1

Gonna post a strat for 4 towers a bit later.

Ignis

Stokin' the Furnace - Defeat Ignis the Furnace Master in 4 minutes on Normal Difficulty.

This is pretty much just a thing of routine and gear, so we'll eventually just do it.

Razorscale

Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare, Defeat 25 Dark Rune Guardian Dwarves with Razorscale's Flame Breath on Normal Difficulty.

This is a very easy achi, since it doesnt have to be done in one reset, but sums up from all the kills in your lifetime. Basically, an OT just has to bring a few dwarves in front of Razor when he does the breath each time, and we'll have it done in a couple of weeks.

Deconstructor

• Every 25%, XT-002 exposes his heart that takes 100% extra damage, in order for this achievement to be accomplished, you will need to first kill his heart which is exposed for the first time @ 75%
• Since there is an enrage timer along with a timer on how long the heart is exposed, a certain amount of dps is required from the raid in order to even access the hard mode.
• If your group successful kills the heart, hard mode is engaged, XT-002 fully regains his hp and will have more base hp and damage and then it becomes a dps race.
• Gravity bombs now spawn Void Zones when they explode and Light Bombs spawn a Life Spark (A mob) that must be killed or does aoe damage to the raid.

Basically, this is one of the hardest hard mods, so guess we'll just leave it for the future. He's been nerfed recently, so don't know how easier it is now, but still, our dps is still not really a 'heart killer'.

Hard mode on him gives extra and improved loot.

Iron Council/Assembly of Iron: (HARD MODE)

Kill Steelbreaker last. This is the most difficult kill order, as Steelbreaker has a DPS requirement as he blows up raid members and gains damage on each death, as well as dealing serious melee damage. Think we'll have to wait a bit with this one.

Kologarn

Kill both his arms within 10 seconds of each other. When this happens, you will have a large number of adds of you and the boss will start spamming damage to the whole raid, HOWEVER if the second arm death kills him you will NOT get the achievement. Thus, the best way is to kill both arms at 31%, then nuke down his last few health.

This one is not very hard if you do it near the end of the fight, just nuke the boss down afterwards.

Auriaya

This involves keeping her adds alive. Basically, they need to be offtanked whole time, preferably not too close to the boss. Semi-hard achi, but prolly doable for us.

Hodir (HARD MODE)

Kill Hodir in 3 minutes, out of his 9 minute timer. This involves heavy raid DPS and efficient use of the buffing adds in order to reach the requirement.

Think we're pretty far away from achieving this one for now

Other optional achievements that might be fun to do:

But I'm On Your Side

Individual achievement: requires a player to be under effect of Iron Boot Flask when the last of the 3 bosses is killed. Flasks can be purchased in Storm Peeks, from Rork Sharpchin for 10 relics of Ulduar. The best is to drink it on last few percent of the boss health.

Dwarfaggedon

Destroy 100 Steelforged Defenders in 10 seconds on the Ulduar gauntlet on Normal Difficulty.

Can be done before the raid, with only several players if others are not interested. Might want to get one demo to easily kill the big guys, rest just take choppers. When first big ones are dead, choppers just go around and aggro loads of dwarves, then all together kill them. Easy, fun, and even doesn't get you saved to the instance.

Nerf Scrapbots

Defeat 20 XS-013 Scrapbots within 12 seconds using XE-321 Boombots on Normal Difficulty.

Just use some imagination Root the bombs untill theres enough small thingies emerging, and then fast nuke the bombs. Ka-boom!

With Open Arms

Defeat Kologarn without destroying either of his arms on Normal Difficulty.

Just needs some fast nuking, because people in the grip will eventually die, although it's possible to keep em up for quite some time. Might be a good idea to SS healers, and have several druids in raid for CRs (which shouldn't be a problem for us ).

Awesome stuff indeed. Lets get cracking on this!

Thankyou.

Flame Leviathan 4towers up (Orbituary)

General issues: all vehicles should avoid all green, blue and red beacons, and keep at max range unless you're riding a siege. If a beacon targets you, just move forward for 10-15 yards.

Siege engines: drivers have to interrupt flame jets ofc, and to shoot down Freyas elite add. Passengers have to shoot down pyrite as much as they can, and to kill big flowers. Before engaging the boss, shoot down as many pyrite as possible.

Demolishers: keep max range, spread in square at the beginning of the fight. throw passangers when needed. Keep 10 stacks of pyrite all the time. Regarding passengers, you basically need 2 dps (moonkin, sp or ele shammie are good cos they can heal themselves if needed). Thus, 2 dps are always up, and one other demo passenger always stays on the vehicle for max pyrite uptime. Always target the nearest pyrite and pick it when vehicle energy drops to 25 (use macros /Target liquid pyrite /cast grab crate). Dps Leviathan, but also all small adds that you have in range. Here's what drivers should do (shamelessly stollen from Elitist Jerks forums):

The key to the fight is Pyrite so I've been tryign to work out the best rotation for demolishers.

First off a demolisher can store 50 pyrite. A pyrite barrel is 25 pyrite. Hurling pyrite costs 5 pyrite. So breaking this down you have 10 shots of hurling pyrite from full to empty and each barrel gives you an extra 5 shots. So makes most sense for the passenger to grab pyrite when you are at 25 pyrite (half full). If they grab it sooner some is wasted. Now the key to pyrite damage is the dot that stacks up to 10 times. The Dot lasts 10s. It does 60K / s damage for each dot stacked. So fully stacked 600K / s. All 5 fully stacked is 3M / s. HP of a 4 tower flame leviathan is about 350M. So with just dot damage you could kill hard mode leviathan in just over 117 seconds!!!

Demolisher driver
At the start of the fight (and any time you're full) throw 5 pyrite barrels in quick succession. At this point you'll have 5 dots stacked doing 300k/s damage This is the ideal point for a new pyrite barrel! If you get one straight away repeat. If you are half full with no new pyrite barrel throw them only fast enough to keep up the dot. Since hurl boulder and hurl pyrite are both instant cast you should do the following.
From the point the 5th pyrite barrel hits you have 10s to restack it. So:
0.00 - hurl boulder
1.50 - hurl boulder
3.00 - hurl boulder
4.50 - hurl boulder
6.00 - hurl boulder
7.50 - hurl pyrite (going a little early due to flight time. After all if your last one stacked as you hit the first hurl barrel above then you have a flight time of 1.5s. So any later and you'll lose your DOT)

Hence the optimum rotation for pyrite is:

Above half full - hurl pyrite, repeat until half full
Below half full - Boulder x 5, pyrite, repeat

Doing the above stacks the pyrite dot to 5 in 7.5 seconds. It then keeps the dot up for another 55 seconds (5 x 9s spell rotation + 10s for final dot to fall off), gradually stacking to 10. This gives maximum time for a passenger to get more pyrite - Obviously you need to drive close enough to fallen pyrite barrels to give your passenger the chance!

Ideally keeping up these rotations means you never lose your dot. Also if you are low, then you really, really need to move to get more.

Bikes: keep Levi tarred, but also keep an eye on small Freya's adds, kite em, tar, dps. Picking up the passengers is even more important than before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkv9YMr5dFY&fmt=22 is a nice movie of what it looks like in 10 men (25 men is actually easier, due to more players you have)