Friday, August 7, 2009

Glory of the Ulduar Raider

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So every Thursday, our fearless raid leader and guestcat, Aeman, runs a 10 man Ulduar achievement run. We're going for Glory of the Ulduar Raider, to get the Rusted Proto-drake.
These aren't so much guides - rather, they're more recaps of how fun/hard/awesome/omfgdifficult each fight is, and also a little status update. Red means we haven't gotten it yet - green means we have.

Orbit-uary: This is tough. We've done three towers up no problem, but adding in the fourth really amps up the difficulty curve. Yesterday, however, we got it done! Unfortunately I wasn't there >.<

Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare: We haven't gotten this one yet, but we easily could. We'll go back to it eventually. We typically skip Razorscale and Ignis in order to move through the instance as fast as possible. We only get 3 hours a week to do this 10 man achievement run, so we want to make it count. No wasting time on fire breathing dragons!

Stokin' the Furnace: Easy-peasy. We got this really early on, on our very first try, I believe. You basically just need to nuke him down without worrying about the adds.

Heartbreaker: The very first time we tried this, we had trouble getting the heart down. We needed ever single CD we could give. Even I was shifting into elf form and throwing my measly wraths at the thing. I think I used a Wild Magic Pot, too. When we finally got it, we were like "Oh, my god, did we get it down? Did his health reset? Guys - we got it - we got it down -" and then he's like "NO NO NO NO NO NO" and my co-healer and I were like "AAAHHHHH!!!!" and we immediately wiped. Lolface. Since then, as we've all accumulated more and more 25 man Ulda gear, it's gotten pretty easy cake.

I Choose You, Steelbreaker: This one was stupid fun. Also, pretty tough. I don't know why, but the first night we tried it, I was so low on mana. I needed my Spark of Hope, my Idol of Awakening, a mana pot, and my innervate. And STILL I was strapped for mana. It was absolutely nuts. We would get to phase 3 where it's just Steely up, and the damage on the tanks and the raid was just so enormous. Then, I don't know what happened, but we went in the next week and like, two-shotted him or something. And my mana was fine. No, I was NOT in fact healing in feral gear. Not like I've ever done that before or anything. Nope.

Disarmed: To be honest, this isn't any different that doing it the regular way - for healing, that is. DPSers need to be hitting the right arm (er, the correct arm) and they have to both die within 10 seconds of each other. I just sit there and throw my barky arms around and heal stuff, and hope that the rubble doesn't come straight for me.

Crazy Cat Lady: Heeeere, kittykittykitty. This is a fun fight, as long as you can get the set up right. Lots of tank damage, lots of burning Auri down. If you've got the dps, it's done in a flash. Well, a few minutes. But a quick few minutes.

I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare: I love this fight. Unfortunately, I wasn't there the last time we got it, but our team got him down with 20 SECONDS TO SPARE. When we first did this, it was like, alright, 3 minutes is unfathomable. There's no WAY we can do this. But oh, we did it. It's all about utilizing the NPCs' buffs. NOTE: DBM's timer is crappy and sometimes will bug out for whatever reason. We had an attempt where we totally would have gotten it, but our timers had disappeared - so we weren't sure, and had to wipe it while he was 5% health. Then we had another attempt where we though we had it, went ahead and killed him, but didn't get it. Ugh. Frustrating.

Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood: ./groan. This one's a headache and a half. There's just so much damage going out. Oh, yeah, great, do a ground tremor right as all the lasher detonate. AWESOME. THANKS FREYA. It's difficult because 1. There is a ton of raid damage going out. 2. It's not a fight where you can rejuv/regrowth the tank and then turn your attention elsewhere. You need to have an eye on the tanks at all times, otherwise they'll splat. Freya hits a LOT harder. 3. We've found that switching to three healers isn't a good option, because you really need the dps. You only get 1 minute per wave, and if the wave isn't down yet, Freya ain't waitin. 4. There's just so much going on. Healing trees growing, adds running around, sunlight you need to avoid, things that need to die at the same time, ground tremors that do crazy raid damage, lashers that explode, etc etc. It's a very helpless feeling, being a healer and seeing the ground tremor warning, and knowing that half of your raid is already at 50% health. Oh shi- I have 2 seconds to heal them all up to full, otherwise we're wiping. Sigh. I don't think we've ever gotten to phase 2 on this fight. We've done all the phases cleanly at one point or another, it's just difficult to link 6 of them together without running into any snags. We're making progress though. We'll get it soon, I'm sure =D

Lose Your Illusion: Haven't tried this one, but I'm sure we'll rock it out soon.

Firefighter: Haven't tried it yet. But my god, how much do I want to hit the big red button that says "do not touch this" or whatever. Yeah - that's right. Really, really badly.

I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning: This one just sounds disgustingly hard. We haven't tried it yet.

One Light in the Darkness: I've seen Yogg literally once. And it wasn't even Yogg. It was his 209348029354 guardians that we spawned because we're awesome, and we stood in the yellow clouds. Our 25 man guild had 10 minutes left until the end of our raiding time, and we had just gotten GenVez down. "So, who wants to one shot Yogg-Saron?" Lol. Anyway, needless to say, we're not ready to rock this one just yet. =)

Has anyone else been working on achievements?

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12 remarks:

Jurik said...

The 10-man achievements are very doable, just keep on working on them!

The hardest of the bunch in my opinion is Freya. (Unless they've nerfed it since 3.2?) So if you're getting too stuck, just go work on Thorim or Mimiron or something.

Mimiron, in particular, is one my favorite fights in there since they nerfed it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDrLW31g9UE

Good luck!

Kae said...

Yes. Yes @ Achievements. I've been living and breathing them the past couple months >.>

We have Firefighter and Yogg+1 left to do :) Ironically, Orbituary gave us more trouble than Freya+3. /shrug? Those adds really make a muck of things! The vehicles now scaling to iLevel now, though, makes it doable by those guilds who hadn't yet succeeded (like mine >< ).

RE: DBM... it was bugging out for me in Naxx last night, and then started yelling at me about the dungeon difficulty bug in Dalaran of all places. This poor mod has had a rough week!

Pantalaimon06 said...

Just a heads up, a lot of undocumented Ulduar changes since 3.2!

For Freya 10-man;

-Due to a bug with a similar light beam being used in Isle of Conquest, the Unstable Sun Beam texture is at 25% opacity and nearly invisible.

-Elder Brightleaf's Essence increases magical damage dealt by Freya and her allies by 50%. Previously 60%.

-Elder Stonebark's Essence increases physical damage dealt by Freya by 50%. Previously 75%.

-Each Elder's Essence now increases the health of Freya's Allies by 20%. Previously 24%.

-Strengthened Iron Roots is now considered a traditional stare and can be removed by:
PvP Trinket
Warlock - Demonic Circle: Teleport
Hunter - Master's Call
Paladin - Hand of Freedom
Shaman - Earthbind Totem with Earth Power (unconfirmed)
Mage - Blink & Iceblock
Rogue - Cloak of Shadows
Druid - Shift Form

Also, hard mode thorim is way easier (in my opinion)than Freya! Just something to consider if you're hitting a wall, but seems like you're doing fine!

Aerivore said...

Vezax really isn't as hard as it seems. I was terrified thinking of doing that entire fight with absolutely no mana coming back, but, if done right only the tank really takes much damage, anyone else who does can easily bandage themselves and, you proc the most awesomest thing in the game - Omen of Clarity. All you have to do is keep Rejuv up on the tank, and tree-slap the boss's back leg to proc it and cast the rest of your spells only with each proc. ^^

The others are a lot of fun. Best thing to keep in mind is mobility and personal responsibility.

Good luck!

Partshark said...

Pushing the Big Red Button gets your squished, I have found. You should really bring some backup.

Anonymous said...

Freya got taken out at the knees with the nerf bat.

If you haven't been since 3.2, go in and give her a go. She is SO much simpler now =)

Good Luck!

Anonymous said...

But my god, how much do I want to hit the big red button that says "do not touch this" or whatever. Yeah - that's right. Really, really badly.

hee hee (c:

I really want to do achievement runs and things, but we still haven't managed to clear Ulduar normally, yet. Still, plodding onward, though.

Najtrok said...

Orbit-uary is fairly easy: Just use 1 Chopper fill it with two people.
So just leave 1 Chopper back.

Then shoot down for about 2 mins some Pyrite.

Then load one caster in Demolisher, the guy in Chopper just hops in, so 3 are in. Pull, then shoot him up. If he comes down place in chopper until Demolisher says load in then hop into Demolisher and thats it. Both Demolishers can keep 10xStack up. And dont forget: If you are chased, shoot stack up, let your man boost in speed and then turn just to refresh, it will work.

We do it First Try since then always.

Averna said...

@Naj: Grats on one-shotting FL + 4.

We're pretty much doing the strat you said.

It's just difficult when people are slowed down, frozen in place, beaten on my adds, burnt by fire, catapulted over FL onto the ground, storm hammered, etc etc. =)

But we DID get it! Woohoo!

Droodjerky said...

They did nerf Freya in 3.2. Then they went ahead and made the beams nearly invisible... oh well, still quite do-able.

Droodjerky said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Teri said...

We just got our Mimi achievement on Sunday and the General achievement last night. We went into Yogg and so thorougly got our butts handed to us that it made us twitch. That factor and the fact it was almost the end of raid time just let us ride the high from getting to see algalon (and enjoy his instant death to all) and we went easy mode.

We actually did use 3 healers of Freya but our dps is typically good (if they will just learn to stop on a target).

Mimi was a beast. The raid needs to have good control at kiting the flames so they can try to keep them in a quadrant.
Thorim again was pretty easy, we tend to have extra time in the tunnel so if you can get arena to keep up with the adds then it shouldn't be too difficult. There are diagrams showing "safe" areas, but do know they fixed the bug that let people stay up top.

The only fights where I had issues with mana are General (duh - especially with the OoC fix), and Mimi depending on what trinket I used. I was swapping around a lot.