Hai XT! Aren't you just a little bundle of cute! Doin' your calisthenics, makin' sure you're all ready for playtime. And your cute little hands! They're held on by MAGNETIC FIELDS. Well that's just neat! I know, all you want to do is play. You just want to have fun with some toys! Hey, that's cool. I want to play too! Wait. Wait, what are you doing? Oh - oh god, what - let go of that! No! What do you mean, you guess it doesn't bend that way?! Oh god no - AAAHHHHXT-002 is a doozy. This isn't because of his abilities, really. It's because of his trash. When you walk into the room, you'll see two groups of adds: one on the left, and one on the right. Two seperate pulls. This is NOT a typical pull. Sooo far from it. It's been said that this is the 'pug test' to get into the main part of Ulduar: As in, if you're a pug, you'll fail the test. I'm not saying that it's *impossible* for pugs. I'm just saying that if you go in with the 'Naxx mindset' of "ok, lots of trash, put a tank or two on em all, AoE them down", you will fail.
Remember how we were complaining (well, I was, anyway) about Naxx, saying there were so few situations that needed good old fashioned coordinated crowd control? My dear gentle complainers: Prepare to immerse yourself in a glorious orgy of CC. Roots! Pet pulls! Frost nova! CC 'em all!
The strat we used was this: 1. Use a hunter pet to pull one group ALL the way back to Flame Leviathan's room (we probably didn't need to go so far away, but we wanted to be safe than sorry =P) 2. Wait out of line of sight there for the pet to get back, with the mobs. This is under the assumption that the little gnome guys run faster than the actual bots. Therefore, since they have to run so far, we'll be able to take care of the gnomes first, and then clean up the bots once they come. 3. Actually, there's a little glitch where the bots come first. So, root the compactobot that jumps and pounces on people , 4. Kill the rest, heal the tanks, etc. 5. Run up towards XT's room, and come across the little glitched gnomes that are just sitting there casting their little bubbles. Heal tanks, etc. 6. Rinse and repeat with the second group.
That glitch will probably be fixed in a later patch or something. I don't think it's suppose to happen like that. It does make it a lot easier to deal with the mobs, though, so enjoy it while it lasts. =)
So now all the trash is dead, and it's time to take down the big guy himself. When you pull, make sure everyone runs in together and is grouped up together. See the square tiles on the ground? You all should be stuffed into one of those squares. In the last ten man I did, Aeman put a lucky charm on my head and everyone grouped up around me, so it might help to mark someone like that. You should be in the middle of the room, with the boss up being tanked ahead near the stairs (melee can break away from the main group and DPS the boss).
Random people in the raid will get "bombed" with either a gravity bomb debuff or a light bomb debuff, and need to run out at least 20 yards either to the left or the right. Your light bomb will do tick damage to the anyone around you, so it's helpful to throw a WG on the group as you run away from them, just in case they get one tick. It's also *imperative* that you heal yourself while you run away. If you don't get any heals, the tick damage can kill you. Throw on a couple LBs and you should be just fine. I have definitely made the mistake of focusing on 1. running away, and 2. WGing the party I was running away from, and then all of a sudden Averna was like "gaahhh!" (you know that night elf death noise?) and it's all like "you have died." D'oh.
To anyone who raided in Tempest Keep back in TBC, this mechanic is very similar to Solarian's bomb (although you don't get thrown up into the air).
The other thing XT will do is a Tympanic Tantrum every minute or so. This deals damage equal to 10% of your health every second for 12 seconds. MASSIVE AoE damage. As soon as you see TT go live, throw out a WG around you. Then put a quick LB or rejuv on yourself and then go to work on the others, LBing or rejuving them. As soon as the WG CD is up, hit it again. You want to make sure you get at least two WGs in during this phase. If you see someone perilously close to death, throw a quick Nourish on them (or, if you eventually get the 4piece T8, throw a rejuv on them ^^). It really helps to start hotting people up BEFORE the tantrum, but I've found that the deadly boss mobs timer doesn't match up with when he actually tantrums.
Note that Tympanic Tantrum does NOT do a flat standard number of AoE damage - it's based on your health points. The damage taken is equal to 120% of your health. So you know how in Malygos' vortex, you had to especially make sure to hot up those with less health to keep them alive (priests, mages, or perhaps people who weren't as geared as others)? You wanted to make sure to hot up tanks, too, but you always knew they could take a bit more damage in the vortex than others. With Tympanic Tantrum, it's the other way around. Basically you have to heal everyone for just over 20% of their health for them to live. The tanks' 20% will be more than the priests' 20% - see what I mean? Just something to keep in mind.
Every 25%, he'll spawn adds from various corners of the room. Know who your off-tanks are, and be ready to heal them as they pick up the mobs.
Every once in a while, XT will get tired, sort of shut down, and his heart will drop down out of his body. The more you damage the heart, the more he will be retroactively damaged once he comes out of "rest time". However, if you KILL the heart, it will activate hard mode. He will automatically heal to full, his total health will be 45% greater, and his damage output will be 35% greater. Ouch.
If you're just coming out of Naxx and have a fairly middle-of-the-pack raid, there's really no chance you'll "accidently" kill the heart - you're gonna need some sick gear, sick dps, and maybe some heroism in the mix as well. SO: just go all out and try to get as much of it down as you can.THIS MEANS YOU, HEALERS! Seriously, isn't it exciting? You get to moonfire and wrath it up! Two things while you dps: 1. Watch the off tank (who probably still has adds on him) and heal when necessary - no need to shift back into tree, but a LB or two would help. 2. Watch your mana - make sure you don't bottom out on wraths and starfires and such.
Phat lewtz:
[Boots of Hasty Revival]
Next up: Ignis!
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1 remarks:
Good Luck on your 25 man!
A good trash tip is that you should CC those little mechagnomes at the start! We run druid heavy, so we root all 4 of them (they cannot be sheeped as mechanicals). You also want them far away from the rest of the trash, as they will cast protective fields on the robots if they are in range. When it does come time to kill them, they *must* be kited by someone without much armor. Their game mechanic is such that they will hit harder the more armor that you have (ask about warriors and feral druids being one shot by them!).
Hope that helps some!
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