Some Ulduar 10man Strats

Went on a casual run to Uld10 with some guys of Essence yesterday, and picked up a few strats i'll write down here before I forget em ^^

Hodir:

Big-assed giant, stand in a circular room and has 4 NPC's in frozen blocks in front of him. The fight in general has a few components. Basically you free the 4 NPC's out of the blocks immediatly after the tank engages Hodir, they each give some sort of buff. After that you just burn down Hodir. The room has a sort of chill affect similar to the last boss in the Nexus, so everyone is constantly jumping around after every cast/w.ever.
Also, huge icecones drop from the cealing which only have fairly small blue dots as a warning on an already blue floor, so be on the lookout since they hurt pretty badly. Once in a while Hodir goes into some sort of an enrage, everyone takes some more frost damage and I imagine he hits harder, lots of AoE healing is needed at this point. The main ability to look out for is Flash freeze. There will be a warning Hodir is casting it, and 2 circles (looking like when you want to place an AoE spell) will appear. Move to the edge (but just outside) of those circles, icepillars will come crashing down and then make a snow heap. As soon as it appears jump on it, if your not on it when Flash Freeze finishes casting your instadead. After this the 4 iceblocked NPC's appear again, free them, rince and repeat.

All in all not a very difficult fight exept perhaps for the healers, the rest of the raid just needs to pay close attention so as not to make the healers job more difficult.

Thorim

Now, I must say I can't tell all of this fight since there was a split-off of 3 or 4 guys (afaik tank-healer-2dps) who went trough a series of rooms killing mini-bosses, but I will tell you what the rest of the raid is doing. Basically the fight starts with some big Jormungar worm fighting some npc's, you kill them both (pisseasy). Then the fight really starts, one group splits off to do the minibosses while the others stay in the room, which is a sort of arena with Thorim standing over it. Mobs are constantly sent down, and a tank has to pick em all up and they need to be dps'd down as soon as possible. The most dangerous are Champions, which do a whirlwind which needs to be kept out of the way and they need to die asap. The raid also gets hit by some lighting from the edges of the ring, and occasionally an interrupt. This phase of the fight is a real mess with mobs popping up everywhere and damage comming from every direction, but if everyone goes about their job (ie tanks pick up as many mobs as possible, dps aoe/dps the mobs down, healers heal everything) its quite doable. When the split off group killed all the mini's they return to the room and Thorim jumps down, and he's tanked and killed in a fairly basic fight. I did hear he does some -200def debuff so apparantly a druid tank is preferrable.

Mirion (or something of that nature)

Now this one we didnt down, and its quite a tough fight with quite a few phases.
First phase is a tank, which has a bunch of abilities. It throws mines around the room which pop for roughly 17k (they all drop fairly close to the tank, ranged dps shouldnt be bothered) which need to be avoided. He does Lava burst on someone, which does some initial damage and burns the ground heavily so they need to move out as soon as their hit. He also does Shock every so often, which is instakill if your in it and is roughly 20yrd around him, so melee and tank needs to run out (and avoid mines while doing that). Once thats down, he gets into a robot. This is a bit of a C'thun fight: dont stand close to eachother, he'll twist around a bit machinegunning random people who need to be healed. He'll also constantly do heat waves which hit everyone for ~~2k or so. He shoots rockets which give a red circle on the floor as a warning, they do roughly 8million dmg so be out of those asap ^^. Lastly he does a C'thun like lazer around the room, always clockwise, just dont let it hit you np.

Then, Aerial Phase, he gets into an aircraft thingie and he calls a lot of adds. I think a DK was tanking him sort of with us, since he's up in the air its mostly ranged stuff from the dk hitting him (and a few dots from the raid or so), but the raid's buissy taking out all the adds. Junk and Assault bots are to be dps'd down normally, bomb bots should be CC'd and killed out of the raid, or in our case the DK tanking the head often gripped them to him and killed them, since he could take the damage wit his 40k hp (they blow up for 25 or so). Every so often the head lands and you dps it.

THEN, The three parts combine, and as such so do the abilities. There are three parts and they all need to die at roughly the same time, and they still do pretty much all abilities mentioned above. We didnt get past this part yesterday since we didnt have too much time on him, and its genuinly fairly tricky with so many parts people can get 1shot. Hope this all helped, lets get there asap!

Just some additions

Thorim

Prom mostly described the arena part of the fight, so I'll concentrate on the tunnel. Group inside needs to move together. A tank, a healer and one or 2 dps will do fine. At the beginning there are some basic tank and spank mobs, with a big guy in the tunnel. He occassionaly raises one of his hands and shoots a large beam which hits one half of the room, and the raid needs to move to the other (something like that passage in Pinnacle, with dragon breaths). Then some more ordinary mobs, and another big guy. In the end there are mobs that do some nasty debuff which damages people around, so the person with the debuff needs to move away asap. Its mostly very easy, but you have to watch the time - if you reach Thorim in 3 mins, you enter the hard mode (he has more hp and damage, and his wife joins him). When this group kills all in the gauntlet, they jump down, and the phase 2 begins (or 3 if you count those worms at the beginning).

This is a basic tank and spank, with loads of damage going on. Raid needs to be spread cos of chain lightning, away from edges of the room, and needs to watch for pillars. When Thorim targets pillars with lightning-like beams, that side of the room will be hit with lightning bolts, so people need to move away from that side quickly. (Think some boss in Occulus does something similar).

Mimiron

Possibly the hardest fight in there for healers. In p1 he occasionally shoots a plasma blast on tank which basically means that the tank is getting huge amounts of damage which needs to be healed up fast. Raid should be spread in left or right part of the room, spread but in range of all the healers (this is especially important for p2). In p2 raid takes enormous amounts of constant damage which needs to be healed up (rejuve and/or renew on all raid members own for this). Prom mostly covered all the other thingies, and yes, the last phase is the most chaotic and hardest one, because you have all abilities combined, so you have to keep eyes wide open and have 100% focus. However, its one of the funniest fights ever imo I'd also strongly suggest using vent for coordination here.

I tried to write down the taccs for some other bosses. I tried to cover the basic abilities and some strats i know, though I mostly know the fights from healers point of view and cannot really give good advice on some tanking/dps taccs (like the pull on auriaya for example), but guess this will be helpful for a start. I'll try to write down the general and Yogg guides soonish, though they're a bit more complicated

Ignis

2 tanks, 2 healers needed, rest dps.

MT should pull Ignis to one of the water pools on the sides of the room. Tanks should stand in the water all the time. Raid stacks behind the boss. Offtank pics up the adds (some kind of constructs) as they appear and tanks them. Ignis ocasionally does a frontal fire attack (scorch) leaving a debuff (some nasty dot) which is removed by standing in the water. Another nasty thing he does is called flame jets, and they basically do damage to everyone in the raid and throw them into air. When this is announced (DBM or Bigwigs both have announcements), all should stop casting, because it silences you if it catches you mid-cast. He also randomly grabs a person and throws them into his slag pit. That person needs to be healed up during that time (health stones and abilities as barkskin/iceblock are helpfull, and healers can heal themselves while in the pit).

Each construct summoned gives Ignis more damage. One strat is to just keep constructs tanked and burn Ignis down before damage becomes unhealable. Other is a bit more complicated, but might be only option if raid dps is not high enough. Offtank needs to pull the constructs into scorch fire and keep them there until they become Molten (turn bright red). Then he should drag them into water. They will become Brittle which means they take more damage. They should be killed by classes with high crit (mages or locks) since a crit hit will most certainly kill them while they're brittle.

Auriaya

1 MT and 1-2 OTs, 2-3 healers, rest dps.

The hardest part of this fight is the pull. It can be done by tanks themselves, hunter pets or trap pull and MD or bubble pull. All ways are really sensitive, and can cause whipes. Don't really know how to do it the best, we used hunters + traps strat, but it often went wrong with either hunters dieing or boss/adds raping the raid. Anyway, once MT has Auriaya and offtanks have adds, its pretty easy.

MT needs to make sure Auriaya is facing the raid all the time. Raid focuses dps on adds (aoe etc) and tries to kill them asap. OT (especially if its only one tank) need heavy healing.Auriaya occasionaly casts Sentinel Blast, a nasty aoe dot with can and should be interrupted (has a long cast time, so shouldnt be a problem). Raid needs to be standing in front of Auriaya. She sometimes fears the raid, so totems, and mass dispell are nice, and as soon as fear is over, everyone should get back together fast. She also summons a feral defender which needs to be picked up by OT so it doesnt kill the healers, and can be nuked fast. When he dies, he leaves some kind of a void zone on the ground, which raid needs to avoid. She also summons some lesser adds which should be aoed fast, and also kept from healers.

Iron Council

2 tanks (one pref DK), 3 healers, rest dps.

The easiest way to kill them is in the following order: Steelbreaker - Molgeim - Stormcaller Brundir.

They need to be separated. Steelbreaker should be tanked by a DK (at least it makes it easier) since he does nasty magic damage all the time. Other tank should pull Molgeim so he's 20-30 yards away from him. Brundir is untankable. Steelbreaker should be killed ASAP so using every cooldown and/or Hero is recommendable from very beginning.

Steelbreaker does nothing really special besides heavy damage on tank and some nasty dot (magic) that needs to be dispelled. Molgeim drops blue and green runes on the floor. Blue rune increases the damage of those who stand in it, so he should be pulled out of them, and raid dps should stand in them. Green runes are deadly, so make sure you move out of them ASAP. Brundir casts chain lightning so some spreading is necessary, Overload which does nasty damage to everyone in 30y radius. After the 1st boss dies, he also does a whirlwind ability with huge radius (Lightning Whirl) and it has to be interrupted. This can be done by the tank who is now free. In the end, when he's the last one standing, he also does lightning tendrils - tendrils that follow around. Just move away from them.

Freya

After a long and boring trash, and 3 big trees (nothing really special, tank and spank mostly), MT pulls her. Raid needs to be spread. She summons 3 different waves of adds (think the order is random). Ancient Conservator (one big add) does some kind of infection, and person who has it has to move away from the raid. He also randomly silences, which can be removed by running under nearby mushrooms. Pack of three elemental-like medium adds has to be killed at the same time. They do some chain damage, so spreading is important. Last, packs of many small adds, which are annoying but easy, just keep in mind that they explode when they die.

After 6 waves of adds, she loses healing buffs on her and can be killed.. She occasionaly summons a tree-like add which heals her and has to be killed asap. There are also some spots on the floor which should be avoided cos they cause damage.

Awesome stuff, lets get crackin' I guess ^^

Great, ty.

General Vezax

Since we're progressing more and more, guess it's time for another boss in this guide

General Vezax is probably one of the most annoying fights Blizz ever made, mostly due to one thing: there's no mana regen during the fight. Almost nothing works, no mana pots, innervates, mana regen trinkets... Only thing we found was working were Dark Runes, but wouldn't surprise me if it was fixed later.

Tank pulls general and tanks him, while everyone else needs to spread around (need 11 yards between people, so /range command should be used). This is done in order to prevent Mark of the Faceless, ability that targets random person (not melee, though) and transfers HP of people near that person to general. If you are close to someone and get this debuff, just move away asap. For healers, its generally the best to stay in melee range so they don't have to move too much, but later in the fight they might need to.

At the beginning of the fight mana users shouldn't dps at all (except wand attacks and such things, maybe cheep dots). After some time, general will cast Shadow Crash. Its a slow moving shadow missile (don't really know how to describe it, but its clearly visible). You should move from the place where it's going to hit. Once it explodes, it leaves a dark patch on the ground which increases damage done, haste and reduces mana cost of all abilities. One group of ranged (not all, since we don't want too many people bunched up) should stand in it and dps as crazy. Others just continue using abilities which do not use too much mana.

Melee on the other hand doesn't have to worry about mana, but has another important issue to deal with: interrupts. 2 people should make a rotation and make sure that every Searing Flames cast is interrupted. One fail at that wipes the raid.

At some point, general will start casting Surge of Darkness. It's a 3 sec buff on himself that increases his damage by 100% but slows his movement speed. Basically, a tank should start kiting him and keep fair distance during this phase in order to stay alive. It can be tricky at the start, since he also grows up in this phase (hit box becomes larger as well) so sometimes the 1st hit is unavoidable, but things like intervene/intercept or dash work pretty fine to make initial distance.

Another thing that needs to be done is to enable healers to get some mana. This is done via Saronite Crystals. One dps should be assigned to kill them (ret pala/dps warr work fine), but leave some time between the kills, since after some time they stop respawning, and you need to have em up in regular intervals (for example, every 20-25% of bosses health). Once killed they leave a green cloud on the ground that converts players health into mana. Each stack of buff/debuff you get while in it doubles the ammount, so after some point it kills you instantly. Paladins should stay till 6-7 stacks, others around 5-6.

Healers should not use shadow crush clouds since they also reduce healing by 75%, however, priest can use it to cast shields, and druids can get into it, cast LBs on tank, and then get out before it blooms - bloom counts with normal +heal bonus, and gets your mana back, so you basically get more mana than you initially used.

So, in short:
1) for ranged classes, dps only while youre in Shadow Crash cloud (dont get hit by it though)
2) melee, interrupt Searing Flames
3) tank, kite him when he stats casting Surge
4) healers, conserve mana and get some back in Saronite clouds
5) all keep spread, or run away when you get Faceless debuff
6) win and loot.

Nice stuff! I was wondering, is ranged dps needed at all or would it be ideal to have as many melee dps for a fight like this? (for instance, should i go kitty or will boomkin in the darkpatch outdmg kitty)

I'm guessing the more melee the better, since as a kitty you don't have to worry about anything during the fight except pure focus on dpsing. Ofc, with damage and haste buff of 100% you can prolly pull insane dps as a moonkin, but it's still safer and in the long run more reliable to dps him constantly. Of course, we can always try it both way, but for first tries, i'd say go for kitty

i think we'll at least reach general before reset so make sure to read this
http://www.wowwiki.com/Mimiron
http://www.wowwiki.com/General_Vezax
http://www.wowwiki.com/Yogg-Saron_(tactics)

hmm forgot that we already have mimi and general strat here :p

Yogg Saron

Ok, guess its time to post the last guide in this section. Note that taccs for mr Yogg might sound a bit complex, but in reality it's not really a very hard fight if everyone knows what to do. This is especialy due to 4 guardians (bosses we killed before) who are of big help on the fight: you'll see we all have increased damage and healing done, increased movement speed, receive healing, and also get saved from death one time per fight by Hodir.

The fight has 3 phases, and requires more or less a standard grp composition: 2 tanks, 3 healers and rest dps.

In phase 1 you'll see Sara in the middle, and green clouds around the room. She has several damaging abilities, but cannot be tanked or damaged, so just ignore her. Green clouds spawn adds which need to be tanked and killed. When they die, they explode, and we need to make sure they explode next to Sara because it's the only way to damage her. Be careful not to step into other green clouds while fighting one add, because we don't want to have to fight more of them at once (think 2 is fine, more than that is too hard).
Adds have 2 important abilities: short mind control, and dark volley that can and should be interrupted. In 25 men you need to kill 8 guardians to pass to p2, not really sure if it's the same in 10 men. The easiest way to do this is to have 2 tanks. One grabs the first guardian (from glowing green cloud) and tanks him near the entrance, where the raid is packed. Other tank goes near the Sara and just dodges the other green clouds untill the add is on low hp. Then he taunts that add and kills him (with help of 1-2 ranged), while the 1st tank gets another add, and so on. This is the safest strat since the clouds usually dont reach the area around the entrance.

In phase 2, theres loads of tentacles around the room. They are all rooted in one place (like on Cthun). Crusher tentacles need to nuked hard, since they do take less damage than normal if they're not tanked. However, if they're tanked, for every percent of damage they take, they do more damage on tank. So, we can either tank em and have tank move away when damage becomes too high, or just dps it only from the beginning without a tank. Constrictor tentacles grab a random person. That person can use some abilities (most of the spells are still usable, dunno about other things), takes some dot damage and the tentacle needs to be killed to free that person. Corruptor tentacles have multiple abilities, one of which is desease on random players that needs to be dispelled, as well as curse, and poison. Yogg is in the middle of the room but completely invulnerable. He does 2 interesting things. One of them is called Brain Link - it creates a link between 2 playes. These persons need to stand near each other, otherwise they'll take damage. Other is Malady of the Mind, 3 sec fear-like ability which jumps from player to player in range of 10 yards, so just try to move away from a person that has it. Basically, all melee should focus on killing corruptor tentacles, and all ranged on crusher ones. If you're near constrictor tentacle, dps it down quick.

Apart from all this, around 60 secs after phase 2 begins, Yogg will open portals to his head. In 10 men 4 people can enter: ideally it's one healer, 2 melee and one hunter, or 3 melee. When all enter, they need to kill NPCs (very low health, so start killing as soon as you enter), pass to the big room with brain and dps the brain. Inside, there are also laughing skulls floating around. They have a linear attack (gaze) which damages people and decreases their sanity. The only way to avoid it is to turn your back to them. They are not killable, so you simply have to move around keeping em behind your back. Might be hard in the beginning, but with little practice it becomes easier. Players inside should try to reach the brain as soon as possible (doors open once all NPCs are dead). Once they do, it channels a 60 sec spell which turns em all mad if finished. So: heavy dps till there's 10 secs left on channel, then fast leave the brain realm.

When players inside open the path to the brain, on the outside all the tentacles will be stunned. This is similar to Cthuns weakened phase: everyone should turn to Yogg and dps him down (maybe finish off some tentacles as well, if there's too many of them). If you see your sanity points are low, you might also want to go into one of green pillars of light and refresh them. Once Yoggs brain is at 30%, p3 begins.

Phase 3 is basically the easiest phase in the fight, especially after all this chaos in p2 Ofc, finish all the remaining crusher tentacles first, but new ones won't spawn. In this phase, you can actualy damage Yogg, so all bunch on one place and nuke him. Every 10ish secs he also spawns a guardian that must be tanked and killed. They hit very hard on tanks when they spawn, but the more damage they take, less damage they deal. Yogg will ocasionaly also try to heal em, and only thing we can do is kill em before he does that. The idea is to nuke down a guardian to around 1% and then switch to another one. Thorim will automatically kill all guardians on low health. Yogg also ocasionaly casts Lunatic Gaze, ability that makes players lose sanity at very fast rate, unless they turn away from him. Healers can simply stay with their backs turned towards him all the time, but dps needs to be aware of that.

TBH, that sounds like an incredibly fun fight ^^

After last night, I've been reading a bit more on general fight, and here are some useful quotes regarding the non-kiting strat:

"Regarding tank healing needed, Vezax is pretty much a question of tank gearing and fight length. Vezax hits hard and fast as you noticed. For 10 man, let your tank maximize his gear for mitigation instead of HP for this fight. A few percent additional avoidance is very noticeable. We run Vezax with a Warrior wearing 10 man gear exclusively and no regular tank deaths whatsoever, so going away from HP towards mitigation should work for you, too.

Also note that Vezax seems to have parry haste. I'm not sure this has been verified to be true, but have a look your tank gibs for hits. Have a look at your melee positioning and expertise rating on the part of your tank.

Armor potions (one immediately before pull, second within the fight) also help."

"We used a warrior tank and with his enrage timer at 10 minutes, you've only got to survive 9 of those buffs(if the fight goes that long) 5 of them (#1, #3, #5, #7, and #9) can be dealt with by Shield Wall.
The other 4, the warrior pops his other cooldowns and either Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, or the pally Hand of Sacrifice covers it. It's obviously more complicated than a DK, but you've got 2 minutes in between ones healers need to help on, and we just call out in advance which healer is going to be responsible this time (or whether the tank is going to just shield wall it)"

"Some guiilds use warriors glyphing shield wall and last stand to ensure one is up for every surge and usually couple the last stand with some kind of avoidance trinket (parry or dodge).

In addition its also nice to know that if your holy priest casts Guardian Spirit from within Shadow Crash, it also does not receive any healing penalty and costs like 40 mana, which gave me a few seconds of time where I didn't need to worry about healing at all. We intentionally let Guardian Spirit to trigger for a free 22k heal (If there was less than 2 seconds left on the GS and it hadn't triggered I would Penance the tank back up to at least benefit from the healing increase)."

"A few tips to manage things from a healing perspective:

1) Resto shaman can provide healing stream totem to the tank. Stoneskin totem works as well.
2) Spriest can provide VE
3) Ret can provide JoL- for us, this fight was totally undoable without a ret paladin. JoL means that you will never have to heal the raid if your dps is good enough."

"Ret pallies can use Art of War procs to FoL the tank as well. And all Ret pallies should have access to Divine Sacrifice which is invaluable at later stacks. It's important to highlight, while Holy and Prot pallies can do JoL, Ret pallies do the biggest/best JoL by a noticeable margin."

Hmm interesting ^^ I'll try to keep buffing my feral gear a bit, both for tanking and dps purposes in each case. Do resto druids have insect swarm? The 3% mitigation might be worth it on Vez then?

Insect swarm might indeed be usefull, however, it's in 5th tier of balance talents (requires 20 points spent, so 21 in total), and max that a resto can spend in balance is 18 points. Thus, only a moonkin would be a viable solution.

I'll make the modifications to my secondary spec let's down him this week :>

Please, everyone who can, watch this video for tonight. It's a very well made (and fun) video guide to yogg saron fight, which explains every phase loud and clear

http://www.wegame.com/watch/YoggSaron_kill_with_voice_over_guide_Warr_POV/