Siege of Ulduar (Part 1)

Monday night, our Raid Team dove back into Ulduar. We were determined to finish what we started on Tuesday with XT-002.

We had two people in the raid that weren’t there on Thursday. After quickly explaining the fight to them, we moved in on Deconstructor.

I was once again in the Tank seat, keeping XT’s attention on my plated behind and away from the squishier raid members. The Developers had made a simple, yet impactful change since our last encounter with the XT. She would no longer cast Gravity Bombs and Light Bombs during Tympanic Tantrum. This change made healing easier during Tantrums and we were able to keep most everyone alive.

Everyone that is, except me. I died about halfway through the attempt. Luck was on our side because just as I bit it, we pushed him in a Heart Phase. While the others poured massive DPS on the Heart and our Mage, Boomkin and Hunters covered the area with AoE, our Resto Druid gave me a Battle Rez. I was back up, buffed and running by the time XT became active again. I immediately taunted her and we pushed her down to 25%. When she came out of that Heart Phase, she was sitting at 8%. We ignored the Adds at that point and just poured on the DPS. Our first pull of the night had resulted in a dead boss.
Our Marksman Hunter picked up a very nice Polearm.

Of course, the night was still young. There was a little discussion about where to go next. Some wanted to try Ignis so we could complete the wing, but our Raid leader felt it would be best to go Kologarn.

We ported to the Antechamber and started dealing with the trash. The group consisted of two Iron Dwarves and an Iron Golem. One of the Dwarves was called an Iron Mender. I thought that might indicate he was a healer of sorts so he was targeted to be sheeped. That brought a moment of levity to raid as our Mage asked for a moment to rebind Sheep to his action bar. He had taken off after not needing at level 80 up to that point. We did a classic sheep pull with the two tanks (Myself and my Death Knight partner) taunt their mobs and go to town.

The next trash pull was two Etched Runed Golems. We had a tank pick up one each, and marked one for focus fire. Everything was going along swimmingly when I hear the voice of our Shadow Priest on vent.

“What’s that red thing on the groun...”

BOOM! Raid dead.

I laughed out loud the entire run back. It wasn’t so much the wipe that was funny, just the timing of his statement and the Rune Explosion. I thought it was very funny.

We continued on until we found a broken bridge. We were beginning to wonder if we had taken that wrong turn at Albuquerque* when all of a sudden Kologarn arises from under the bridge. You can only see the upper half of his body, the guy is huge. He reminded me of Zeus.

Kologarn’s left and right hands are targetable separately from the Boss. We ignored the Left Hand and had DPS destroy the Right Hand. When it was destroyed, it spawns Earth Elemental Adds that need to be picked up. Meanwhile Kologarn is hitting your tank and periodically doing an Overhead Smash which reduces your armor by 20% per application. It seemed to be avoidable, because it would fall off.

Our plan was to have the tanks switch off to manage our Debuff. The first attempt, we made a Tank switch just as the Right Arm went down. I had to chuckle when he emoted ‘Only a Flesh Wound!’ What’s next, a boss that demands a Shrubbery!!

We were out of position to pick up the Adds that spawned and they ran rampant into our raid, and we wiped. At each death, Kologarn was yelling YOU FAIL! Nice touch.

We regrouped and fought him again. This time, we wouldn’t worry about a tank switch until after the Adds were dealt with. I had 3 stacks of the Debuff on me (60% armor reduction), but my healers were able to keep up with the damage. My Death Knight co-Tank taunted him off me just in time.
Our Raid had no trouble dealing with Eyebeam and with the Adds safely controlled, Kologarn went down on our second pull. When he dies, his body becomes the bridge to the rest of the instance.He dropped a Tanking sword and some Tanking Shoulders. I hadn’t taken the time to really look at the loot table and see if I needed the Shoulders or the Sword, but the Raid Leader gave them both to me anyway.

I can’t find them on WoWhead to link them, so I’ll discuss them at a later date.

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