Ulduar10 - Boxing General Vezax and other Hard Modes

Rather than bump the older thread (is 20 days old?) I'm just going to post my strategy here in hopes someone uses the search function.

So last weekend I got my DK team up to 85 and AV weekend was very good to me so I entered Ulduar in full Ruthless. Three DKs are frost, one of them speced blood with one Holy Paly. Gear is full Ruthless so no PvE gear at all. I was able to do most of the bosses and their hard modes without any issues. I'm still working on killing Yogg and Agalon without outside help.

Anyways Vezax is an annoying fight not because of he cuts off mana regeneration but because he casts Mark of the Faceless. Since I run a melee team this meant he healed for 150,000 every second each time he casted it. I tried a few strategies, but the one that worked the best was placing two Death Knights outside of melee range:

DK4
DK1 Vezax DK2
DK3
Pal.5

I disabled IWT on DK1 and 2 and the net result was I effectively two manned the boss. DK4 stays far enough away from the tank so that if he gets Mark of the Faceless, it doesn't heal Vezax. My Blood DK was able to heal through much of the damage with the occasional heal from the pally or Draenei racial. During my kill attempt, the Holy paly actually spammed the tank and sat at zero mana so I imagine with proper healing, the fight would be trivial. Also, remember to kill one of the saronite vapors if you don't want hard mode.

Thorim:

I first thought this fight would be impossible since you need to split the party. In reality it was very simple: I sent two dps dks in the tunnel, and left the healer, tank and dk3 in the arena. I dropped my aoe effects in the arena and then focused on the gauntlet, swapping back to the arena every time I killed a mini boss. After Thorim is down the fight is a simple tank and spank



I'm still working on Yogg, and if anyone has any advice, please leave it here.

Well I just boxed Yogg and after a dozen wipes or so I have a "basic idea" what I did to kill him.

Comp: 1 blood dk, 3 frost, holy pally: gear: full pvp (season 11) with a mix of raid finder. One of the dks has 2 piece, but i don't see a big impact.

P1: this is easy and I'm sure you all know it, kill the adds by Sara, after 12(?) p2 starts. Touch the clouds to speed this up.
P2: I'm still doing this with 4 keepers (4 lights) so I sit in the green wells until the tentacles spawn. I added the line "/tar Constrictor Tentacle" to two of the frost dks howling blast macros. This way when I'm killing spawns in the brain room, there's a chance they will akill the constrictor tentacles.

The other two tentacles are annoying, particularly the one that reduces damage by 20%. I try to have these dead before entering the portals. I send two dks into the portal so I can leave this phase in one vision.

While in the brain room, I just run around killing all the adds and ignoring sanity. The best "vision' is the Icecrown one since all mobs are close together for howling blast spam. On my kill I did not get this room.

Once the brain is clear, I run my team to a sanity well and clear tentacles as needed. Kill the Corrupters as needed and take is slow. This phase is fairly simple and since you can finish P1 and P2 within ~4-5 minutes you'll have plenty of time to kill Yogg. On my solo I had one DK bug out in the brain room, and another who died. So I finished p3 with a holy pally, tank and one frost tank. Good luck

After several full clears and many of the Ulduar achievements out of the way(I'm still not sure if 1 Light could be boxed), I decided I'd start working on Ulduar 25. What follows is my attempt to farm legendary shards:

Comp: Blood tank(full hour of twilight tank gear, stamina and mastery focus), Frost dks(LFR weapons, 17k dps), Holy Pally (mix of pvp, pve gear 3.4k spirit)


Flame Leviathan: I do this one with one tower (Thorim), I've tried it with 2+ but the difficulty is much higher and you don't need another tower for it to qualify as a "hard mode." Otherwise there's not much to say about this fight, spread your vehicles, stack pyrite and swap vehicles as the boss focuses them. Try to stick with one vehicle since rolling a 10 stack is much better than rolling many 1 stacks.

Razorscale: I ground the boss on 3rd turret cycle. P1 is fairly easy; kill adds and dps the boss until grounded. On p2, the tank will get a stacking debuff that ultimately reduces rune regeneration to 0. My first attempt ended in a wipe because of this. My last kill, I taunted the boss every 2 stacks onto a dps dk who eats a debuff allowing for the tank’s debuffs to fall off.

Ignis: Still a work in progress. I attempted to break the adds in 25 and the damage output was too much for my paladin. I plan to try this fight again ignoring the adds and hopefully out dps him before I'm over run.

Xt-002: While I cannot put this boss on hardmode, the hardest part is dealing with scrap bots that spawn during the heart phases. The goal is to do enough damage to the heart so you can avoid the second Tympanic Tantrum. After the heart phase ends, kill the adds and push the boss into the next heart phase.

Intermission for Trash: The first wave (and the last) before Kologorn is the hardest trash in the instance. I ended up substituting a warlock for a dk so i could bring more CC. In the end it doesn't matter since....

Kologorn: While this boss seems trivial at first (make sure interact with target cannot be spammed or you'll fall off the edge and die) it is much more difficult since his grip takes 3 targets during which they cannot interact. I have not yet killed this boss, but I suspect if you could kill the right arm before/after the first grip it should be possible. Further killing this boss prevents the afore mentioned trash from spawning. So in the future I will kill this one on 10 man.

Council: I killed this one on "easy mode" going Steelbreaker, runemaster, and then stormcaller. Keep steelbreaker out of the buff zone and dispel the fusion punch and the fight gets that much easier. This fight is harder on the healer then on the dps. I hope to try this with runemaster up last and using the chilibains talent.

Auriririiraira: Still a work in progress: the damage output is currently what is stopping me. LoS the cats when you pull to prevent pounce damage, group D&D for guardian swarms, kill the Guardian cat, DPS from the front to absorb the cone blast. The problem is fear followed by the damage cast. I need a better set up to interrupt and then the fight can become more manageable.

I am still working on Thorim and Mimirion, I will be adding elders to Freya, and I did down Hodir after several 4% wipes. Vezzax should be killable with a proper interrupt rotation.

Have you tried running 4x blood for the once that are 'too hard'?

That is a thought I've considered.

Nice work!

After last week’s PVE farming extravaganza, my dps now pull anywhere from 18k to 22k. Last night’s VoA25 run I sat at 19-20k on non-add fights and 22k with adds. The increase in DPS was quite noticeable when i went back into Ulduar.

Council: This fight is all about steelbreaker. He provides the only real damage so after his death it's just a matter of killing the other two. I did kill Runemaster last, and while his' adds are a mild annoyance, they can be ignored and allowed to explode on the tank/dps. No need for chillbains.

Hodir: Now that it isn't a dps race I find this fight kind of fun. Mark the mages before you pull and keep them unfrozen. Then run around and collect buffs. While I doubt I can kill him in 3 minutes (this expansion), I'm tempted to have my paladin go Ret and provide more dps.

Crazy Cat Lady: I equipped two pvp trinkets and went at it with my normal group make up. The fear is on a ~30 second cool down so two characters can effectively cancel the shadow damage. The fight is long and I almost considered going for Nine Lives.

Mimiron: Work in progress. He doesn't spray napalm on multiple targets so keep the healer separated and you only need to deal with Shock Blast. P2, separate so he only damages one character at a time. Move out of rocket strike and the Laser Barrage. P3, kill the big trash, loot it, drop it under the boss. repeat until P4. At this point I disconnected logging back in to see my team get wiped out by a rocket strike.

P4 should be possible, My death knights will struggle to kill the head will only death coil and howling blast.

Tonight I'll give Mimiron, Freya +1, Ignis, and Thorim a shot.

Mimiron down. This wasn't as difficult as I thought, P1 through p3 were fairly simple. p4 required the moving and making sure everything died properly. Not my favorite fight but certainly nice to get down.

When I mentioned having 20k dps helps, I really meant it. Freya +1 down and Ignis as well. Without switching to blood.

Awesome. I always like to see stuff like this.

I have high hopes for my DK/WAR/HUNT*2/SHM squad. Hopefully they will do very well in old dungeon runs for achievements and mog gear.

I thought about going all melee but then realized what a pain some of the PvE encounters can be with an abnormal comp. What works in PvP is well.. usually not what works the best in PvE.

Good to see you pulled it off though. Gives me the idea of trying it! My hunters are still only ilvl362 though. Got a ways to go but getting there.

What are you doing MadMilitia! It's AV weekend get out there and get your free ilvl390! Then you too can experience the joy of looting staffs and Shaman tier tokens! (It took me four weeks to get the pally chest)

In all seriousness, after overcoming the 17% hit, having ranged characters for Mimiron, Vezzax, and Yogg would probably be easier for a ranged group. Of course fights where you need to move (Hodir, Agalaon and possibly Freya/Ignis) the melee team will have it easier. And Howling Blast is just cheese as it is.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Narij

What are you doing MadMilitia! It's AV weekend get out there and get your free ilvl390! Then you too can experience the joy of looting staffs and Shaman tier tokens! (It took me four weeks to get the pally chest)

In all seriousness, after overcoming the 17% hit, having ranged characters for Mimiron, Vezzax, and Yogg would probably be easier for a ranged group. Of course fights where you need to move (Hodir, Agalaon and possibly Freya/Ignis) the melee team will have it easier. And Howling Blast is just cheese as it is.

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Nothing bothers me more than playing with randoms and their whiny bullshit over me multiboxing and trying to kick me whenever the chance arises.

Far as I'm concerned it's not worth it. I'll valor it up to get my conquest gear. Not that I really need it.