To get to Kologarn, you port through into the Antechamber of Ulduar after XT-002, walk up the stairs in front of you, and BAM, he pops up like a whack-a-mole. He looks like a cross between a water color painting of some Titan god and comic book version of Gandalf*. He's got two arms, one of which the raid will sometimes "kill", but then it will respawn a bit later....so he's like one of those strange starfish that will regenerate legs. Or those lizards. That regenerate their tails. Hm.
Two or three tanks will be front and center, tanking Kologarn where he stands. Kolo puts out a stacking debuff on the tanks that reduces their armor, so they'll be doing a rotation, each taunting when the one before has 2 stacks on them. You should be keeping an eye on which tank has aggro and healing them, while also prehotting the tank who will be taunting next once it gets close to their turn. There will also be an off tank who will pick up adds as they spawn, so make sure you know who that is and keep an eye out for those adds. Killing the right arm will spawn them. These adds will cast Stone Nova which does about 8k damage to anyone within 10 yards. Therefore, no one wants to be near them except for the tank.
So where does everyone else stand? Well, you should all be in a horizontal line facing Kologarn, with healers in the middle of this line (you want to be in range of everyone). This is because he does a eye laser thing that will target one person. If he targets you with his eye lasers, you have to run back towards the gate where you came in, and strafe one way or the other. This way, the laser won't hit anyone else; it will hit the ground behind the line of people. It only lasts for a few seconds, and once it's over you can run back into your spot.
EDIT: A couple great things that help: Face the wall behind you. That's right - face yourself AND your camera towards the back of the room. You won't be able to see the tank, but let's be honest, you never see the tank anyway. You're too busy looking at Grid or Healbot or Xperl or whatever you use. (AMIRITE?! I mean, srsly, Kologarn could be the Kool-Aid man for all I know. I have no idea. I'm too busy watching small boxes and health bars =P) This way you can see the eyebeams to the left and the right of you when they start up, and you can start running WAY before they hit you. It's *awesome*. Seriously, you'll never take damage from them again. The eyebeams take about a second or two to actually meet in the middle (the middle being where you're standing). You'll see them way before they meet, and you can start to run with plenty of time. Note that this totally doesn't work for DPS, for obvious reasons.
Because of this, you CAN'T wait for DBM to tell you that the eyebeams are on you. If you wait that long, you're too late, and they're already damaging you. Keep that in mind, and use visual cues, not just DBM.
Every so often he'll grab a couple players and Stone Grip them in his right hand. DPS have to switch to the right hand and damage it, to the point where he drops them. They'll be taking quite a bit of damage in there, so be sure you know who's been stone-gripped and hot them up.
Kolo's left arm will sometimes do an AoE "shockwave" that will bring everyone in the raid to under half health or so. Yes, it's a bit scary. When this happens, it helps to pop Barkskin and then remember not to panic - just hot everyone up as best you can, throw some Nourishes on them and get everyone back up to full health. Remember to keep your hots on the tank while you focus on the raid, as well. Also remember that you have 5 or 6 other healers that are helping you do the same thing. It will help to give priests assigned groups to use Prayer of Healing during this phase. If you have the mana to do so, I'd keep one LB ticking on a few different people who might have low health in general during the entire encounter, to help get them back up to full as soon as possible once that shockwave hits.
Once you have these mechanics down, it's pretty much just heal heal heal.
*Interestingly, he does yell "None shall pass!" when you aggro him. ^^
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12 remarks:
*Interestingly, he does yell "None shall pass!" when you aggro him. ^^He also says "Just a flesh wound" when he regrows his arm... both quotes from Monty Python's infamous Black Knight. (Gandalf's line is "You shall not pass!")
Fun fight. :D
I really like this fight. There's not much that's cooler than seeing him pop up from the ledge when you're not expecting it!
*Oh lets run up the stairs here, la-de-da, oh cool a room, looks pretty, I wonder whats in -- HOLY BLOODY CRAP!! THERES A GIANT GUY THAT JUST STOOD UP TO KILL US!!*
Doomkin pretty much nailed my reaction to our first run :D
it's a fun fight, for sure
My raid is struggling with the laser beams. Is there any advance notice of who he's going to target? Whenever Deadly Boss Mods announced that he was targeting me, the 0.5s it took to turn around and run was too much... I get one shotted. Same experience for most of the raid.
Thoughts?
Did this boss first time (in 10's) last weekend. It's... interesting.
After like 20 wipes (for some reason we got a lot of petrifying breaths, bloody tanks :P ) we eventually nailed him yesterday. With 3 trees, a let's say, less than optimal raid-setup, and an undergeared OT. I'm sure with proper setup we'll nail him relatively easily.
With only the 3 trees running around it was pretty much a free-for-all, with focus on the tanks and the gripped person. In this role I can definitely see the benefit from a haste-build, which I didn't have :P
@the Right Arm -- Are you sure that DPS-ing the arm is the cause of it dropping the gripped player? I think it's just a set amount of time? Nevertheless, we used the "kill Right Arm, switch to body"-tactic, so no way of telling. Didn't see it mention here, but arm and body have a shared health-pool, so I don't see a reason to switch to the Arm only when he's holding someone? Or is there a difference between normal and HC?
@the eye-beams -- The beams start out parallel to one another, before they focus to 1 point. If you're in the middle of those two beams, you're it. If you're not, you're not ^^ I used Barkskin here if I'm targetted, not on shockwave.
All-in-all, nice short intense fight, I like it!
I believe you have to do 450k damage to the arm to get it to drop the players. When you kill the arm, it also reduces his health by 15%. I haven't heard anything about his arm health and body health being connected, other than the "kill the arm, he loses 15%" thing.
So should you go all out on the arm once it spawns? That might actually be a decent strat.
As for the eyebeams, you should be able to see them and run away in time. But even if they do hit you once before you can run away, they only do about 4.5k damage... maybe the eyebeams are happening right after a shockwave? I'd say popping barkskin when you see it coming would be a good idea too.
I guess that's the difference between 10's and 25's then. In 10's the Right Arm only has 530K HP, boss 6.8M IIRC. The Grip is released after 8-ish seconds or way less damage than 450K.
We indeed go all DPS to the Right Arm, because not only does it damage the boss, it also disables him from gripping players == less strain on the healers. I'm not saying you should, but it's an option. You could also opt for killing his Left Arm, so he doesn't do his raid-wide sweep for 45 secs, it's just what you as a raid prefer ^^
So, funny story. I was going to write this exact same kind of post for holy priests, but I was like, "Hmm.... I need to SS it next time I'm in Ulduar because I don't wanna steal some picture...."
And the pic you used is the same one I was going to steal, hahaha.
Yeah, >.< I keep reminding myself to take my own SS when I'm there, but ALWAYS forget. This Monday I should be able to get one. Thanks for reminding me!!
Do not rely on DBM to tell you to move for the eye-beams. DBM message tells you when you are taking damage from the eye-beams, it does not tell you if you are the target of them. When they first appear they are on either side of a given character however there isn't a raid announcement saying who this is. If they spawn near you, you need to move, head to the back and start making an arc around, if they start following someone else who you were standing near you can go back, but if they keep following you, just run around until they disappear.
In our raids it's not uncommon for 3 or 4 people (25 man) to start running when they appear since it's not always easy to tell who they are targetting.
@Matt: Yes - exactly. I'm going to add this into my post. Last time I was in there, I definitely had to start running WAY before DBM told me to. Otherwise, it was too late. Which might be why Sergio was having problems before =(
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