Wotlk - Ulduar - Halls of Lightning (HoL) - Ionar and Loken strat

[Psych]

As it was the double daily for me yesterday, I figured I'd give heroic HoL a try on my 5 druid group (one resto, one bear, 3 moonkin). No issues anywhere up until Ionar (with the exception of the Slag guys which are immune to nature damage, forcing me to either swipe them to death or use starfire...ugh, waste of mana!).

Ionar - initial attempt:

I'd done him on Normal before, and I could heal through everything fine, I was treating it as if I was solo and doing the "run back down the stairs" thing, but would get hit by the ball lightning each time we came back up the choke point on the stairs. In Heroic, however, this caused a wipe almost immediately. Wasn't able to move the guys backwards fast enough, nor would I have been able to get them back into position fast enough had I lasted past the first disperse.

Ionar - second (and successful) attempt:

Now, I have my arrow keys set to control only my slave toons, where W,A,S,D,Q,E control only my tank (main). What I did, was kill the group of guys on the second balcony up, after the first little steps leading to Ionar. Then, arranged my team in a spread fashion, in a line, facing directly up the stairs. They were spread about 5 yards apart, directly in a line so they were all facing Ionar.

Pulled him, did the usual fighting and such, when he throws the balls out or does any aoe damage to a someone, it only affected them or maybe one other guy. When he dispersed, I immediately strafed left with my guys and manually moved with my main. I kept straffing left and moving with the group until the far left guy was almost touching the balcony. Wild Growth'ing as much as I could while moving just to ensure they're topped up. When the sparks came in, the right toon took a few hundred damage from a hit or two, nothing major. Strafe right with slaves, move right with main, get back into position, roughly.

Rinse and repeat!

After such a horrible death on the first attempt this was really nice to nail so easily on the 2nd.

Loken:

I use a very similar strategy for Loken, strafe out as a group the second I see his Nova, super easy. Bunch up on Loken, so no major aoe damage happens, and which means this works fine for melee as well (just don't bother getting behind him, that'd be too complicated for this strategy). Nova starts casting, strafe right with the group and your main, nova goes off, stay put. Loken will come to you, I just move over a bit closer to him when he's settled in for the next beating. Strafe the opposite direction on the next nova, rinse and repeat.

My healer doesn't have the power to heal through the nova otherwise, not boxed at least, so this was good stuff.

Maybe it's been said before but just incase, there ya go, maybe it'll help someone

[Bigfish]

Real men take Lightning Nova to the face and ask for more. And Tranquility is your friend.

j/k, but seriously, grats on beating it. Ionar beat me silly before I got him down.

[Psych]

I guess with a few druids you could really chain up tranquilities back to back, one for each nova...my toons have so little hp though, think one nova would finish them off

[warbringer]

I nowadays just spam the DPS button on Loken and eat one lightning nova (which I survive with about 25% health on each toon) and then he keels over. For those of you with a shaman/hunter, a nature resistance totem/aura does miracles here.

[Niley]

but he dies in like 10s before any nova :P

[Fuzzyboy]

but he dies in like 10s before any nova :P

You must have some nice gear! My DPS chars are usually at around 4-4.5k dps and he usually starts casting the second nova before he is down, which is like 30 seconds. To kill him 10s before the first nova, that means you're killing him in about 10 seconds, which puts you at at around 50k DPS (he has 512k hp in heroic). That's over 10k dps per char for all in the group including tank and healer - impressive ;-)

[Niley]

You must have some nice gear! My DPS chars are usually at around 4-4.5k dps and he usually starts casting the second nova before he is down, which is like 30 seconds. To kill him 10s before the first nova, that means you're killing him in about 10 seconds, which puts you at at around 50k DPS (he has 512k hp in heroic). That's over 10k dps per char for all in the group including tank and healer - impressive ;-)

http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/8709/...0609004428.jpg

that's pretty old ss before gear upgrades. 11s is my record now, but dbm rounds it up so who knows what it is exactly.
edit.btw i don't use a tank on some encounters anymore, loken is one example, old kingdom last boss is another(dies before insanity) etc

[Fuzzyboy]

That's pretty sick! :-)

I rarely get my shaman above 6k even with heroism, and you have 7.5k with three of the. 25-man gear helps, of course, but still.

http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/8709/...0609004428.jpg

that's pretty old ss before gear upgrades. 11s is my record now, but dbm rounds it up so who knows what it is exactly.
edit.btw i don't use a tank on some encounters anymore, loken is one example, old kingdom last boss is another(dies before insanity) etc

[Niley]

That's pretty sick! :-)

I rarely get my shaman above 6k even with heroism, and you have 7.5k with three of the. 25-man gear helps, of course, but still.

Look:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...mreaver&n=Ishv

This is the 2nd shaman with 7.4k, she has all badges gear/ToC H other than a ring from naxx 25, and next patch everyone will be swimming in t9.
Shaman that did least amount dps is actually the best geared one, got to love rng, and warlock was still wearing some greens :P
Doing good dps these day is all in click macros, and timing them properly.

[Fuzzyboy]

For Ionar I just stand still (though spread) while he's dispersed and heal through it. Don't attack, don't move, just heal :-) Once he returns, resume DPS'ing. When done that way he's really really easy.

For Loken just bunch up and DPS. Be full health when he Nova's and chuck AE heals right after (if you have to, pre cast the AE so it hits right after Nova) while continuing to DPS.