Casual Raid Leader

Last night folks… was our first visit to Ulduar.  Yes… I know…. some of you are bored.  Some of you are done with Ulduar.  Well some of us rebuilt a new guild and got a little delayed ok??  But hey… what can I say?

For a glimpse of what my day was like.  I spent most of the morning getting my mundane chores done at work.  My breaks were dedicated to searching out strategies, making sure I read the details on the fights, and watching videos.  As a raid leader I need to come across as at least somewhat credible right?  So its a lot of time taking notes, going through things in my head and just basically figuring stuff out.

I prepped myself for pretty much what you expect to see any time you step foot into an instance the first time.  I was all set with my repair money.  I was all set with my flasks… I was all set to walk into Ulduar and get the living tar kicked out of me.  What I wasn’t expecting to find was the ROCK Factor.

Phase One:  First Time Jitters

Well… ok in case you’re wondering, we went into Ulduar at about 8:00.  It was probably 8:15 before everyone was there and ready and I was able to explain stuff to people.  In fact it was probably like 8:30 before we even had sorted out who was going to be in what vehicle.  Just in case you didn’t know, Ulduar opens with a vehicle sequence.  And… oh for those people who suck at vehicles its got to be a holy terror.

I was blessed that I had a couple of people who had done the first sequence.  So they helped us through the intro stuff and we were able to start banging away.  Mostly clueless we kind of trundled forward beating down towers and killing large groups of mobs.  The beginning section is just fun with a capital F.  Holy crap the officers were just beaming talking about how much fun they were having blowing crap up completely clueless about what we were doing.

Enter Flame Leviathan…. we killed all of the three towers.  We decided on playing easy mode for the first kill.  So we set it up explained the fight and…. the team delivered.  First time in and just a simply flawless execution of killing Flame Leviathan. 

Flame Leviathan First Kill

Phase 2: Entering the Beast’s Lair

I really didn’t want to abuse the raid with XT-002 Deconstructor right out of the gates. I fully recognize he’s the gatekeeper. He’s the guy whose going to keep us from going any deeper into Ulduar. I know guilds who have been working on him since the patch came out and still haven’t downed him. He’s kind of a scary guy to be honest.

So I fully planned on starting with Razorscale.  We have some people who are still gearing up in Naxx so I expected we’d spend quite a bit of time on Razorscale.  We did actually.  Its a very complex fight to explain in the grand scheme of things.  The first attempt went about as well as I’d expect.  We tried splitting into a left and a right side and burning stuff there.  However that just didn’t quite work out for us.

We came back at it with a new strategy.  The tanks both gathered up adds and then stacked together for AOE.  We AOE’d everything down at once.  That strategy worked really well.  So we started stacking, AOEing the adds and then prepping for dropping Razorscale down.

Not bad really overall.  We actually got him into phase three on the second attempt.  Granted he entered phase three right as both tanks dropped dead, but it was an accomplishment none the less.  What’s a bit screwy is the timing on the adds.  It seems like we can’t quite ground Razorscale without having some new adds spawning.  So we decided to have one of the tanks just gather all the adds solo when he grounds and have the second tank go pure DPS for the ground phase.  that worked out pretty well actually.

The next attempt I personally screwed up hard core.  I had no rage and just timed it wrong on the start.  The adds just mauled the raid right out of the gate.  The fourth try we made just amazing progress.  We had him almost down, but just lost a tank at the wrong time during phase 3.

Attempt number five… well you see the results below.  God… my raid team really wanted to see me work last night didn’t they????

Razorscale First Kill

Phase 3: Rocking and Rolling with the Deconstructor

XT-002 kind of intimidated me to an extent folks.  I’ve watched videos.  I’ve read the strategies.  To me, it seems like a simple fight.  I’m actually amazed he gives people so many fits given what I’ve read on it, but my mind may be wired differently than most.  Either that or I’m somewhat sadistic.  I’ve been called that by a few people before.

My strategy was to have one of the tanks keep him at the stairs.  The second tank would go pure DPS (we have two druid tanks for this attempt) for the beginning till 75%.  So we popped heroism right out of the gate and used the OT as DPS for the first phase.

Then my thought was for the heart phases we’d have the melee stay on XT-002’s heart and then have ranged mop up the adds.  That worked well, but I discovered the timing is actually such that there was a HUGE dead time when his heart first dropped down before adds got anywhere near him.  So I changed up mid stream in the fight to have the ranged just pound the heart.  Given how easy the adds were to clean up I had one of the highest DPS ranged swap to full time DPS on the heart.  The only rule was simple.. DO NOT KILL THE HEART!!!!

The first attempt went pretty well, but we just got mauled by the third or fourth tantrum.  The second attempt we made the change with the DPS mostly staying on the heart, but swapping like 10 seconds into the second phase to the adds.  That went well till an unlucky lightbomb mauled one of our healers and then we lost the main tank.

The third attempt… well it was our last attempt for the evening.  And holy crap  did the guild ROCK IT.  I mean they just nailed it.  Ok… sure all but one DPS was dead at the very end, but well… we got him. 

It was by far the MOST fun I’ve had in a long time.  It was wiping… it was a repair bill… but you know what…. it was fun.  And my guild just came out, played intelligently and just rolled over the bosses.  For a first night in, that was just an amazing set of work.

XT-002 Deconstructor First Kill

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 6:18 am and is filed under Raid Leading, WotLK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.