Unfinished Business Before Ice Crown

We cleared out Onyxia and Normal ToC10 Tuesday night before heading over to Ulduar. Ulduar? Yep, Ulduar. My Raid Leader has a plan which I think is just brilliant. We are going to extend the raid ID until we finish Glory of the Ulduar Raider.

We nearly had Glory of the Raider from Naxx finished but could never quite pull off an Undying run. One of those Undying wipes was caused by me. That motivates even more to help these guys get a shot at Ulduar Raider.

We already had Orbit-uary, and Heartbreaker. Last night we knocked out Stokin’ The Furance, Crazy Cat Lady and I Choose You Steelbreaker. We tried for Disarmed, but we actually put too much DPS into Kologarn and he died before we could get the achievement.

Now I had all of those achievements previously, as well as I Could Say This Cache Was Rare, but several of our raid team didn’t, so we were trying to get everyone caught up.

The ones I still need are Lose Your Illusion (Thorim Hard), Firefighter (Mimiron Hard), Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood (Freya Hard), Saronite in the Morning (Vezzax Hard). We also need One Light in the Darkness (Yogg with 1 Watcher). We’re saving Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare for last.

With the Badges from the ToC run, I’m getting close to being able to get another piece of Tier 9, but I’m running into a problem.

The Tier pieces I already have are Gloves, Legs, and Chest. I need one more piece for my T9 4 set bonus. The plan had been to buy the Shoulders and then save up for the non Tier helm or get the Helm from Onyxia. I’ve seen both the Healing Helm and the Ret Helm drop from Onyxia so far. The problem is I already have level 232 Shoulders from the Faction Champions, but my current Helm is my Tier 8.25 (level 226), and it's the last piece of gear with Block Rating on it. I’d love to dump it.

So I could save up badges until I can buy the offset helm, and then go back and save up badges for my T9 Shoulders. This would allow me to upgrade my ‘weakest’ piece, but it would delay getting my T9 bonus by a couple of weeks.

Alternatively, I could buy the T9 Shoulders, and get the 4 piece bonus, and then start working on saving for the non set Helm and hope Onyxia is kind to me in the coming weeks.

The 219 pieces I have left are my Cloak, Trinkets, and Belt. My Helm is 226. Everything else is 232 or above.

The higher level trinkets that are available to me as a 10 man Raider just haven’t impressed me. The only Cloak upgrade would be from a Tribute to Mad Skill. We aren’t quite there yet. I’ve been waiting for a shot at the belt off Jarraxxus, but I made need to get an Indestructible Plate Girdle made in the interim.

We 3.3 going on the PTR, I’ve probably got 6 to 8 weeks to get ready before we attack Arthas’ home.

Comments

Bandarno said…
We've been more or less doing the same thing in our 10 man, though we've seem to hit a wall at Freya. As of now, all we have left are her, Mimiron, General, and Yogg.
Duel Specs make a few of the fights much easier.

Use a 6/4 gauntlet/arena split on Thorim to ensure that you can consistently enter hard mode, and the best thing you can do, aside from your usual tanking duties, is help cleanse the frost snares that sif casts on the raid so that people don't get one shotted by the lightning charges. Assign places to stand beforehand so that multiple people don't get chain lightning'd to death late in the fight. Two tanks and two healers allows you to handle the soft enrage quickly. This is the easiest of the hard modes you have remaining.

Vezax is the next easiest, but if you're just extending, then Freya is much easier thn mimiron. On Freya hard, we found the best blance between survivability and damage output is to go with a one tank, three healer setup. Make sure not to kill any detonating lashers during the ground tremor, and use hand of freedom to fry the iron roots ASAP. Burn the water spirit and stormlasher to about 15% then burn the snaplasher from 100%-0% and finish off the last two adds. Other than that, it's just a tighter enrage timer.

Mimiron Hard Mode is actually the hardest fight in Ulduar. The secret is in correctly kiting the fire, and utilizing the fire cap. One tank and three healers is the only way you'll be able to keep up with the phenominal raid damage, and still hold off the much shorter enrage timer. Melee DPS takes much less damage in this fight, but ranged DPS can perform much greater effective DPS for the fight.

Vezx Hard mode is pretty simple, just make sure you've got 4 people out to atract crashes, and solid interrupters. Make a macro to quickly target and taunt the animus when is spawns, and make sure you've got some form of Shdow Protection. Make sure that people have vezax focused, so that DBM will announce outgoing shadow crashes. 1 tank and two healers is optimal.

Yogg is going to be difficult, especially if you haven't done the fight without Freya and Hodir. Your healers will struggle and everyone will need to be meticulous with your sanity. But all in all, the actual mechanics of the fight don't change until you get rid of Thorim (which you should never do until you're ready for alone in the dark), it's just that the margins become so much slimmer. Sara's blessing will strt killing people in two or three ticks. If you don't have cleanses left on topside, you're finished. send 4 melee into the brain room, and burn through the influence tenticles as fast as possible.

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