Utgarde Keep

[Fuzzyboy]

Fun instance - mobs are a bit too far apart for my taste. Only boss that caused me trouble was the first boss until I found the tactic. I will upload a video sometime tomorrow.

Anyway, the tactic is to bunch up at the boss with your whole party. Ignore chains of ice and the curse and just heal when needed. DPS boss and divine shield if he tombs the tank (consecrate needs to be up to catch the adds). No need to kill the adds (they died from my chain ligtnings without me targetting them.

[Fuzzyboy]

Oh yeah, and on the last boss, save heroism for when he's undead. The first part is pie, just dps and go behind him with tank when he starts casting (keep rest of party away), when he awakens again, go to town on the dps :-)

[puppychow]

I cleared UTK on my 70 team, took me about an hour although I went slow and explored a bit. Other people in general were saying they were clearing it in 20 mins and less (!), don't think I'll get that fast unfortunately.

I wiped twice on the last boss before killing him. First boss is not too bad, just keep group kinda near and chain lightning and chain heal alternate. You could probably kill him with 5 shamans and maybe 1 EE. Second boss is also easy, just DPS one till its at 30%, then the second, then bring em down together. I think this would be harder without a tank, since the melee guy hits really hard.

For final boss, an easy way is to make sure you are passing space (jump) to all your toons. positions your guys like so:

tank <-- BOSS facing


team

You just have to be really fast on your tank. When you see him doing his roar, immediately JUMP so you cancel any casts on your team. Chain heal and heal up the tank after. When you see the boss do his Smash ability, immediately run the tank "through" the boss so he is on the other side. The boss doesn't move when he is casting Smash, so you basically flip him 180 after he is done with it. Every time I wiped its because I jumped instead of moving on Smash, or moved instead of jumping for Roar -- I need to make my enemy boss cast bar bigger on my screen on my tank I think.

Your tank will pretty much die if your team takes the roar, or if your tank forgets to run out of smash. Once you get down the pattern its not too bad (he smashes, then 4-6 secs will roar), its a little bit of coordination in moving the tank, making sure you jump for roars, and healing both the tank and team. I didn't bother decursing (mage is 5th team member), found I could just chain heal through any damage. I think in heroic this is going to be very hard. I suppose 5 shamans could do this boss with a few EE's tanking, but you are basically going to have to kill the boss in phase2 in 20-30 seconds since he will 1 shot the EE's and then come kill the shamans.

I am bummed you get 0 Vengeance Hold rep for doing the instance, its basically just XP and nothing else. Each mob was giving me ~1200xp unrested, or 2400xp rested. I was averaging around 150k xp/hour, but this was going very very slow - hopefully I can speed it up a bit tomorrow.

[Fuzzyboy]

Video: http://www.wegame.com/watch/Utgarde_Keep_The_Keep/

[DLoweinc]

this was the key for me JUMP!!!





For final boss, an easy way is to make sure you are passing space (jump) to all your toons. positions your guys like so:

TO JUMP when he roars! no silence makes him easy as hell!

when he does his axe thing... just heal until it goes away, only lasts 6 seconds or so

[lexuspartsdude]

Video: http://www.wegame.com/watch/Utgarde_Keep_The_Keep/Nice Video man, straight and to the point. Gives me a better idea of how to position my toons. :)

[phara]

Thanks, great video. My PVE team barely dinged 70 so when I tried prince this morning it was pretty rough, only got him to 50% ... if I bring in my badge geared boomkin and keep it more simple like you did, should be easy.

[phara]

Just read your blog too - good thoughts there. How well is your team geared? I assume mostly badge gear as you indicate on your blog that you were farming heroics. Unfortunately my PVE team may need more gear so I'll need to do a few quest areas before I can clean sweep the instances (not horrible, just a lot of blues from ub / sp / mt still).

On that note, I think I'm going to change my team makeup also. I'm running 1 paly, 2 sham, 2 mages right now. You were actually one that gave me advice to drop a mage for my boomkin (already 70) back when I started my team, I should have listened then :) I'm going to drop 1 mage for the boomkin. The mages are too squishy, and the second doesn't add any benefit really ... and I did clear most trash in UK and didn't really need the CC (and druid roots / hex totem now will help).

[puppychow]

How fast are you guys able to clear UtK? I just did a timed run, it took exactly 40 minutes and I killed every mob in the instance. Got 98k xp total, or 140k xp/hour. Not bad, and so far (for me) its faster than questing, but I was hoping to do even better :( I might be able to shave 5-10 mins off the time but I don't think really much more than that, and the XP will drop as I level -- currently level 71.

[Gares]

My team of 5 shammies is getting owned in there...I can't even get past the Proto Drakes at the start...sigh

[gigauae]

with crap gear X4 shamans and tankadin, downed him to 17k ;(
edit:downed him, inserted /tar frost tomb after /assist tank, so whenever tomb is up i nuke it

[phara]

Fuzzy also posted a nexus video on his blog, very clean run (the insane DPS helps a lot).

Anyone recognize the unit frames UI?

[schlange]

Fuzzyboy

can you post links to your pally, druid and shammy team? I am not sure I am ready with my team to try Utgarde Keep, but I would like to try instead of only questing - bored of questing already.

[phara]

I just finished UK today, I can tell ya you don't need stellar gear :) My pally is 11k hp, 13k armor. My dps and resto sham are ~500 sp (1 dps sham, 1 resto sham, boomkin, mage). I followed basically the same strat as fuzzy ... except the first boss I pull him into the hallway before his room into one corner and have my gropu bnuched up. I do this because I had a hard time getting him in chain heal range with my group. When adds come I just consecrate, if tank gets frost tomb I do storm / arcane explosion (or shield out first time).

[Nachtkinder]

My team of 5 shammies is getting owned in there...I can't even get past the Proto Drakes at the start...sighI feel your pain.

[valkry]

Cmon guys, the first boss is easy in UK, don't even need a tank. get aggro with your lead by only casting with him for a bit. Then heal to full, lightning bolt-lightning bolt-heal...lightning bolt-lightning bolt-heal-aoe, heal...Repeat til dead.

I've managed to do it with just 4 ele shammies.

http://i129.photobucket.com/albums/p224/gatinau/firstbossUK.jpg

[Nachtkinder]

The first boss isn't hard IMO. The protodrakes are what make me die :/

[Tdog]

The first boss isn't hard IMO. The protodrakes are what make me die :/Lag is what makes me die. I need to get rid of this dual-core processor :(

[Fuzzyboy]

Just read your blog too - good thoughts there. How well is your team geared? I assume mostly badge gear as you indicate on your blog that you were farming heroics. Unfortunately my PVE team may need more gear so I'll need to do a few quest areas before I can clean sweep the instances (not horrible, just a lot of blues from ub / sp / mt still).

On that note, I think I'm going to change my team makeup also. I'm running 1 paly, 2 sham, 2 mages right now. You were actually one that gave me advice to drop a mage for my boomkin (already 70) back when I started my team, I should have listened then :) I'm going to drop 1 mage for the boomkin. The mages are too squishy, and the second doesn't add any benefit really ... and I did clear most trash in UK and didn't really need the CC (and druid roots / hex totem now will help).Thanks for the kind words :-)

Actually I only have a few pieces of badge gear since I didn't get to farm very much due to having to level up my druid (my original team was pala + shammies). My gear was pretty mediocre (and still is) when starting out - about 50% blues and 50% purples - mostly rep/tradeskill gear, nothing exceptional - anyone with S2 gear would leave my puny dps in a trail of smoke :-) I try to keep my castsequence macros fairly clean and attempt not to switch targets too much :-)

[Fuzzyboy]

How fast are you guys able to clear UtK? I just did a timed run, it took exactly 40 minutes and I killed every mob in the instance. Got 98k xp total, or 140k xp/hour. Not bad, and so far (for me) its faster than questing, but I was hoping to do even better :( I might be able to shave 5-10 mins off the time but I don't think really much more than that, and the XP will drop as I level -- currently level 71.I don't think I timed it - around 1 hour for the first couple of runs, a bit less (30-40 mins) for the last runs, although I was never in a hurry. Actually I find it a bit frustrating that mobs are so spread out (they are spread in nexus and azjol-nerub too, because it makes them harder to grind for xp. On the positive side I guess I'll appreciate the lesser amount of trash once I'm 80 and need to farm :-)

[Fuzzyboy]

Fuzzy also posted a nexus video on his blog, very clean run (the insane DPS helps a lot).

Anyone recognize the unit frames UI?The unit frames are Pitbull and my dps isn't really insane - recount reports around 1000-1100 average on my elemental shamans (in the video it'll say 1200 but thats due to CL jumps on trash) and boomkin, around 800-900 on my pally (only sustainable on multiple targets) adnd 500ish on my healer (not much healing is required so a lot of the time my resto shaman is just chucking lightning bolts - this actually helps out a lot.

[Fuzzyboy]

Fuzzyboy

can you post links to your pally, druid and shammy team? I am not sure I am ready with my team to try Utgarde Keep, but I would like to try instead of only questing - bored of questing already.Pally: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Bitling
Resto-shammie: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Cottuy
Elemental shammie 1: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Laffite
Elemental shammie 2: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Watling
Boomkin: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Collier

You don't need any special gear if you have a tank though, the instance is pretty straight forward. If you're a shammie team you may need some more solid gear.

[Ken]

Please help to improve our wiki!
http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Utgarde_Keep

[Trammel]

Ya for up and comming 5 DPS teams this is pretty much a big screw you.

Ya you can do it if you have 10khp/arena gear or what have you, but I'm pretty sure you'll get boned in quest gear of the appropriate level.

[Parsous]

Had no issues in Utgarde keep but my 5-box tank is T5/T6 geared and my healer is T5/T5 equiv. Didn't even have to move out of his smash since I could laze around on the healer for pretty much the entire fight.

[phara]

The unit frames are Pitbull and my dps isn't really insane - recount reports around 1000-1100 average on my elemental shamans (in the video it'll say 1200 but thats due to CL jumps on trash) and boomkin, around 800-900 on my pally (only sustainable on multiple targets) adnd 500ish on my healer (not much healing is required so a lot of the time my resto shaman is just chucking lightning bolts - this actually helps out a lot.

Thanks :) It's good to know your dps isn't as high as I thought it would be, I should actually be able to complete the nexus then with a few more upgrades. My shaman is doing about 700 dps, boomkin 900 ... but my mage is dissapointing, I can't get more than 550 dps out of him, and he's geared much better than my shaman. Most of my toons are new enough that they don't have gems / enchants though, I just don't want to spend the money to quickly replace it (maybe I'll pick up some cheap ones at least). On a side note, I'm really impressed with elem shaman dps ... my dps sham has pretty bad gear and still maintains 700 dps easy.