Taking my 5 boxer group into Ulduar - Successes and Failures

[DLoweinc]

So my group has been pretty successful (I think) having cleared Naxx 10, got the "safety dance" from Heigan, cleared EOE, cleared Obsidian Sanctum, and cleared Vault of Archavon (both Archavon and Emalon).

With those behind me and that gear on my group, I decided to go into Ulduar and see how that was.

I should first say that I did not "5 man" this content at all, I took 5 friends with me and have been rather successful so far.

Friday was my first attempt in Ulduar, I found that driving the vehicles prior to Flame Leviathan (and for that fight) were easy, but obviously targetting and firing was another story. I could keybind the DPS keys from each vehicle to the same key and my guys would fire, but I could not aim it well.

I cleared all of the Storm Beacons and towers/trash with my five guys plus one friend, who rode as gunner in one of the demolishers.

We attempted Flame Leviathan with a total of seven characters (I had another friend join us) and we got him to 30% on the first attempt. I used the previous main page article posted here as a guide and the fight was rather easy. We did not catapult anyone up to kill the turrets to cause a system shutdown, so what ultimately wiped us was Flame Leviathan's 100% speed increase. Had we used one person on a chopper to drop oil or tar, or killed the turrets to reset his speed buff we would have been okay.

We ended up filling the remaining three spots with some other current and previous guild members to down Flame Leviathan while earning the Shutout achievement.

We then moved onto XT-002 and killed him on the first attempt, earning both the Nerf Gravity Bombs and Nerf Engineering achievements. This fight was ridiculously easy and I could see doing hardmode with my normal group.

We then moved to Kologarn, who wiped us a few times as we figured out positioning of my guys and how to deal with laser beams and rubble/oblivion. We ended up deciding to heal through the laser beams on my guys and using the standard strategy of killing the right arm then dpsing Kologarn, using a rinse and repeat method when the right arm respawns. This fight seemed easy once we decided to just heal through the laser beams.

Next we fought Auriya, which also seemed rather easy. This fight seems normal to me as it is standard strategy to stack up behind the tank (my guys always do anyways) and then use a tremor totem to break fear, then regroup and continue dpsing. Sure, there are voidzones to avoid, but with so many other fights having this, I have become very good at moving (I use keybound strafe keys to do it instantly).

At this point, I had not been any farther in Ulduar on my own and the others in the raid who had were unsure of what bosses we could successfuly do with a 5boxer in the group. No one would make a decision so I decided to have us try Razorscale, as one of the early bosses, hoping that it would be somewhat easy.


Well Razorscale is where we ended up wiping three times before "calling it a night". I think that Razorscale is very doable as a 5boxer (+5 of course) but you need solid tanks so that the healers don't die from all of the adds. Our tanks were both Death Knights and were not spec'd for AOE tanking, therefore we ultimately were not successful. With proper tanking I could see Razorscale going down on the first or second attempt.

I have spent some time reading through all of the boss fights and learning their abilities. I think that I can safely say that group will go further than what we got on Friday. How far, I cannot say...

If you have some strategies or have gotten farther while 5boxing please chime in. I would love this to be a post for people to come to for info when they need it.

It is difficult to gauge how far other 5boxers are getting in Ulduar... I did a search earlier and did not turn up much.

Please post questions or comments.

I will provide links to my 5boxing team's armory below:

Prot/Holy Paladin - http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lothar&n=Mayorquimby

Elemental Shaman - http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lothar&cn=Montiburns&gn=Epinicion

Arcane Mage - http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lothar&n=Gkprwillie

Shadow/Holy Priest - http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lothar&n=Itchyy

Balance/Feral Druid - http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lothar&n=Scratchyy



I am looking for other multiboxers on Lothar (Alliance) to do 25man content, I spam in trade chat every day and so far have not gotten any responses. If others multibox on Lothar/Alliance please let me know and perhaps we can help each other out.

[Ogloo]

great run dude! im glad to see people progressing to all of the content.. but people need to post about pvp achievments

[Dorffo]

ignis should be doable but will require some practice moving the boss - other than that, just hit jump on your casters when he starts doing his flame thingy that interupts spell casting.

Razorscale:
- make sure you've got a kill order and follow it.
- Nature resist totem will help with the chain lightning.
- have your 5 live players stand more towards the middle of the ring while you hover on the outside. That way they will draw the blue flame fire most of the time and save you from toasting your whole crew.
- bring her down as soon as the 2nd turret is ready and burn her while your tanks hold the adds that are still up
-phase 2 is just like grobulus with a tank-swap tossed in, very easy

Freya:
- takes practice, but very doable with 4-5.
- no real multi-boxing specific comments on this one except to practice moving the charged toon away from the group when the Conservator of Nature guys spawn and cast Nature's Fury.

Thorim - you could run the gauntlet group if you're raid members can survive the arena

Hodir - might be tough with all 5... very chaotic and movement intensive.

[Starbuck_Jones]

Congrats, Very nice!

[DLoweinc]

ignis should be doable but will require some practice moving the boss - other than that, just hit jump on your casters when he starts doing his flame thingy that interupts spell casting.

Razorscale:
- make sure you've got a kill order and follow it.
- Nature resist totem will help with the chain lightning.
- have your 5 live players stand more towards the middle of the ring while you hover on the outside. That way they will draw the blue flame fire most of the time and save you from toasting your whole crew.
- bring her down as soon as the 2nd turret is ready and burn her while your tanks hold the adds that are still up
-phase 2 is just like grobulus with a tank-swap tossed in, very easy

Freya:
- takes practice, but very doable with 4-5.
- no real multi-boxing specific comments on this one except to practice moving the charged toon away from the group when the Conservator of Nature guys spawn and cast Nature's Fury.

Thorim - you could run the gauntlet group if you're raid members can survive the arena

Hodir - might be tough with all 5... very chaotic and movement intensive.
Thanks for the info. We got Razorscale tonight it was incredibly easy and shows that it was a tanking problem previously (adds loose everywhere).

We have Auriya left and then onto new content so I'll take your suggestions to heart and update the thread after tomorrow night :)

My shaman got two upgrades and my paladin did too (but for tanking, which I do in naxx but I heal in Ulduar as there is too much movemen to do independently; IE tank in one spot, have the group in another)

I think that I can do most of the encounters but will need some practice and strategies that work for me... obviously the experience with the encounters helps too

When we did Flame Leviathan tonight I drove one siege and then had my other four guys pile into the choppers. Since only sieges and demolishers get "focused" I just put the focused Siege on Autorun and then use the chopper to drop tar/oil to help slow FL down. We don't bother with the turrets on top. What this means though is that the other 5 people can do all the targetable gunner positions and keep pyrite etc for the pyrite stacks to whoop his ass.