Hello Yoggy

Monday night we headed back in Ulduar. We had actually gotten a group together Saturday night, but something came up in ‘real life’ and I had to bail on it. Luckily, our Feral was on and they were able to continue the run without me.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get any bosses down on Saturday, so we were faced with Mimiron, and General for Monday.

As we head down to the Spark of Imagination, my Raid Leader announces some changes to the strategy. He wants me tanking Phase 1 and Phase 4. I’ll also be tanking all the Junk Bots and Assault Bots in Phase 3.

I was a little concerned about Phase 1 because as a group we were a little short in the cooldown area. I’m very thankful that the Developers have realized the cooldown issue Paladins have and recently communicated via everyone’s favorite crab that Paladin’s will be getting another one.

All we had for Phase 1 was my BubbleWall and Pain Suppression. I also had the Glyph of Salvation which I saved for the third Plasma Blast if it came. Most of the time, Mimiron would start casting it just as the Phase ended.

I gave a pretty good accounting of myself in Phase 3 picking up all the Assault Bots. Some of the Junk Bots got a little bit of quality time with my healers before I taunted them off, but they only kind of tickled my Resto Druid’s bark.

Phase 4 has got to the toughest tanking gig I’ve had since Flame Tanking on Illidan. First problem is that the bottom section of Mimiron’s V0L-7R0N completely encompasses my little dwarf (maybe some Noggenfogger is called for?)

What I did was strafe around like I do in Phase 2 trying to ensure I was always looking at the middle section’s back. As I’m positioning him, he casts Shock Blast. I ran out. After he casts Shock Blast, he laid out a bunch of mines. The range weren’t used to seeing them out that far and we lost some DPS.

Next attempt, I did a better job of keeping him centered, but when Laser Barrage hit, the game thought I was in front of him and not behind him, though it clearly looked like I was behind him on my screen.

We make heavy use of Anks and Battle Rezzes for Mimiron.

After two more wipes, I decided to tank him like it was Phase 1. I ran in and held him in place. When he started to cast Laser Barrage, I used a tap, tap, tap on my strafe key to move around him without moving too much. We managed to survive two Plasma Blasts. Our Mage blinked just in time to save himself.

We got another Vanquisher token, and I managed to pickup a new Retribution cape.

I would put that to use immediately after we cleared the trash to General Vezax. We managed to two shot him. My DPS was lower than last week mainly because I spent much more time running around breaking Saroite Vapors for our healers.

If you are a Paladin or Hunter, the next time you find yourself in Vezax’s room, turn on Sense/Track Undead. It’s pretty funny.

We had about an hour to work on Yogg. We were mainly concentrating on Phase 1. For this Phase, you have to kill 8 Guardians, right on top of the Boss. The problem is that there are 6 green clouds floating around and if one of them touches a member of your team, another Guardian spawns. It’s very easy to get overrun.

We tried a couple of different strategies. I'll discuss two of them here "Ferry" and "Fezzik".

With Ferry, you have everyone at the door. The Tanks bring the Guardian's to the group where they get dpsed down, and then another tank taunts it off and ferries it to the boss where it is killed.

Fezzik is named after a charcter in the Princess Bride. He's basically a giant (and was portrayed by Andre The Giant). The strategy takes it's name from one scene where Fezzik and Inigo Montoya are trying to get through a crowd of people. After a couple of minutes of 'excuse me', 'pardon me', etc, Inigo turns to Fezzik and says "Fezzik?" Fezzik cups his hands over his mouth and shouts "Everybody....MOVE!!" The crowd parts and they go on their way.

In the Fezzik strategy, everybodies got to move and keep moving to avoid the clouds.

We tried both strategies. Initially "Ferry" felt more controlled, but it was taking too long. The longer Phase 1 goes, the faster the Guardians spawn. We also had the problem of the Guardian's dying from DoTs when the Tank had to avoid a cloud to get to the Boss. Each Guardian can cast a nasty AoE, and can mind control. When you have a tank holding a mob get mind controlled, it's usually a Bad Thing. Our best attempt with Ferry was about 30%.

So, somewhat reluctantly, we adopted Fezzik's "Everybody MOVE!!"

Initially it felt much more chaotic, and the sinking feeling of 'we are never going to get this' started to pervade our thoughts. One of our raiders asked "Did we accidentally put it on Hard Mode?"

We marked one of our range dps to act as a beacon of sorts for people to follow. We also noticed that the beginning of the phase was pretty controlled. We were actually waiting around for Guardians to spawn.

So we decided to have one of the tanks run into a cloud and spawn one right away. That seemed to help and it was either that attempt or the next where we actually got to Phase 2, but we were still overrun by Guardians. They don't magically disappear when Phase 2 starts.

The Keepers who you freed from Yogg's control now assist you. Here's a shot of Mimiron giving us a hand. One of our Raiders remarked that if the Keepers had tried kill Yogg half as hard they tried to kill us, the fight would already be over.

The next attempt we got into Phase 2 in pretty good shape, and before the night ended we had begun to make some progress in Phase 2. We can really see the progress we've made from one week to the next. It's a really fun fight. I never got a chance to fight C'thun, so this is my first go at an Old God. I'm looking forward to playing with him some more next week.