The feedback in this post was very useful to us in approaching hard modes, so I thought I'd summarise it.
General Notes
How you approach these depends on your group make-up, strengths and weaknesses. Don't be afraid to try. Broadly speaking, the bosses listed below are all fairly straightforward.
Gear and Complexity
Hard modes in 10 man Ulduar are tuned to be achievable by those with gear from 10 man ulduar (i.e. ilvl~219). If you are coming into Ulduar with 25 man Naxx gear, you are already at that gear level. If you are sporting gear from 25 man Ulduar, you exceed it. If the fight is made 'hard' by having aggressive enrage timers or high dps requirements, gear will be a significant factor. If the fight is made 'hard' by becoming much more complex, perhaps less so. Overgearing makes everything easier.
Iterative Learning Bosses
Flame Leviathan, Freya and Yogg Saron give the option to turn up the difficulty nob one notch at a time. FL +1 is barely harder than normal mode but with better rewards. Freya +1 is a slightly less trivial increase but still not a big deal. If you are making long term plans, consider switching around with +1 or +2 so that your raid can get used to the different abilities that the bosses gain. Both FL+4 and Freya+3 fall into the harder modes not detailed in this overview.
Flame Leviathan
Talk to the Lore Keeper of Norgannon rather than Brann to start the event. On the clear to the boss, you now need to kill 0-4 of the towers (names correspond to one of the four keepers).
Mimiron - Fire - Red lazer beam leaves a trail of fire. Don't drive in fire
Thorim - Storms - Blue lazer beams trigger an explosion, don't get hit by it.
Hodir - Frost - Freezes people in place
Freya - Life - spawns adds
For a first go, leaving up mimiron's tower is as good a choice as any. Leaving up more than 2 towers makes this fight significantly harder, as not only is there extra damage to your vehicles and complexity to the fight but FL gains more HP for each tower. Getting the full hard mode will requires a good strategy for maxing damage from the Demoliser's Pyrite while keeping turret killing going. Consider the following:
2 siege drivers - interrupting flame jets is highest priority, ramming freya adds secondary, avoiding getting ramed and kiting through fire essential.
2 siege gunners - shooting freya adds and pyrite.
2 demo drivers - pyrite stacking on the boss and staying alive.
1 dedicated demo passenger - staying in the demo, refuelling and shooting down pyrite.
2 players rotating 'away team' and demo passenger - You are either killing turrets or refuelling your demo. Only 1 person on top FL at any one time.
1 biker - add control and 'away team' ferry.
Handy macro for demo passengers:
/Target liquid pyrite
/cast grab crate
Don't forget - equipping higher ilvl gear makes your vehicles better.
Razorscale
Not a hard mode, but part of the mount meta, toast a couple of iron dwarfs per week - the 'medium rare' achievement is part of the meta and the kills are cumulative.
XT-002
Start the fight as normal, but when the heart is exposed for the first time, kill it. He will heal up to his new higher hitpoint maximum, so you can choose to ignore the scrap bots, but clear away any bombs or Pumellers. The fight becomes fairly simple now, the major change is that gravity bombs leave a void zone and light bombs spawn a Life Spark (low hp, passive aoe damage). You'll need to create a system for placing the bombs (light is right!) and a plan for stopping the life sparks hitting the raid with their AOE (either tanking or nuking from range can work). Also have a plan for when people take additional damage from sparks or bombs during the tantrums.
A fairly simple fight overall and a good choice for first real hard mode.
Iron Council
There are two 'hard modes'. Steelbreaker last is graded the hardest in terms of loot rewards but in terms of complexity could be simpler than medium mode in the 10 man, provided you have the gear. One tank handles Brundir + Steelbreaker while the raid kills Molgeim. Try to position yourself such that your DPS can make good use of runes of power. Brundir gains lightning whirl, Steelbreaker gains static disruption. Lots of interrupts and stuns on brundir until he's dead, steelbreaker away from the rest. When Brundir dies, it's meltdown time, blow dps cooldowns, be ready for the tank to explode after 1 minute, and for every fusion punch to be mitigated by some kind of cooldown.
In 10 man, this is one of the easier hard modes, especially if you have the gear advantage.
In 'medium mode', kill Steelbreaker first, then Brundir. In the final phase, Brundir will turn to face a random player (but not target them) and start casting Rune of Summoning. A rune will appear in that spot, then a bunch of little elemental adds will appear. These adds move quite fast and explode, but can be snared. You'll want a strategy for moving the raid and snaring/dpsing those adds before they reach the group and blow you to bits. Frost Mage with improved blizzard really handy but by no means the only way of doing this.
Medium and Hard mode kills both drop the Archivum Data Disk that you'll need to start working towards Algalon.
Thorim
Complete the gauntlet and agro Thorim before Sif leaves to trigger the hard mode. This might mean allocating more dps to your gauntlet team. Once the arena starts, Sif will add some extra raid damage and effects. Dispel frost novas (especially when it's rooted people in the path of lightning), avoid the blizzard, avoid the lightning, while staying spread to avoid the chain lightning and healing through the rest of the damage.
Another of the easier hard modes, provided your raid can not stand in stuff!
Hodir
Kill him within 3 minutes for extra loot. Hitting this target is about
:
- Making the most from the npc buffs. Storm Power is a bigger deal than you might realise, the moonbeams are good too, and toasty fires help those dps classes that hate moving.
- Reducing healing requirements. If you can do this with 2 or even 1 healers, you'll have that much more dps. To do that, the raid needs to be avoiding the various elements of splash damage.
- Dealing with agro. If DPS are uber buffed and cranking the damage, they are probably going to push more threat than the tank can match. If you have rogues and hunters, they can help, but it might also be necessary to do some controlled 'over agro then taunt' type tricks. Beware of taunt diminishing returns if you do this. Remind your ranged dps that standing by bosses is dangerous when pushing the threat cap.
Last of the easier hard modes.
Freya
Leave up 1-3 of the guardians to give Freya extra abilities and increase damage output. The trees do NOT join the fight in an S3D style.
Ironbranch - Increases
physical damage done by
Allies of Nature by 50%, Freya can root people. The roots make things like kiting and 'moving away from lashers' suddenly a lot harder, so you'll want them killed quickly. "/target strengthened"
Brightleaf - Increases
magical damage done by Freya and Allies of Nature 50%, Freya can fire sunbeams. This add has the hidden side effect of making the lasher waves much more dangerous - the lasher explosions become a bigger factor. See the marmot strategy addendum for tips on how to handle the new harder lashers.
Stonebark - Increases
physical damage done by
Freya by 50%, Freya get's Ground Tremor (aoe damage and spell interupt).
Freya +1 is fairly easy and probably the first to leave up would be Ironbranch. +2 is harder and probably means adding Brightleaf, +3 is proper hard. Note that you don't get emblems of conquest until you go for +2. The step change in difficulty comes from the overall damage taken by the raid. Good control, especially of lasher waves, and quick response to nasty roots are key.
General Vezax
Fairly challenging but very controlled. The fight goes as normal, but no green saronite clouds are killed. When the final cloud spawns, they will all rush to a spot just behind Vezax and coalesce into a new mob, the Saronite Animus. He needs to be picked up (like vezax, is untauntable) and killed very quickly, before his stacking debuff (
Profound Darkness - Spell - World of Warcraft) overwhelms whatever mana your healers have left.
Key to the fight is in preparation and positioning. Healers and caster DPS need to use their most mana efficient specs and get maximum benefit out of shadow crash. You need at least 4 people at range to avoid shadow crash targetting melee. Rest (including some healers) should stand up close. The 4 at range will need to be reacting quickly to every crash and every life leach. Some healers can make good use of shadow crash (Disc priests casting low cost shields, resto shaman cheap earthshields, druids lifebloom). Paladins can adopt a protection spec (something like a 28/43/0 build, down to touched by the light) for very mana efficient heals, since deep holy mana regen through illumination is irrelevant.
Mimiron
Still one of the hardest, but recently nerfed, Mimiron hard mode is triggered by pushing the big red button at the back. Throughout the fight, doomfires will spawn and move around the room - slowly but attracted to players - often put out by one of mimirons creations. Mimirons own damage and health are increased to boot. Phase 1 plasma blasts and napalm hits are more scary than normal mode. Mimiron will extinguish any fires around the 2nd shock blast. Phase 2 is much the same as normal mode but with extra fire making the healers job even harder. Mimiron will do a close range fire suppresant frequently and a ranged frost bomb less often. Phase 3 and phase 4 are much the same as normal but made more complex by the addition of the fire and some fire extinguishing robots. The fire extinguisher shots do damage, which on it's own wouldn't be that threatening but combined with all the other damage can be fatal.
Keys to success are a good plan for moving around the room, high dps and hps, without getting hit by mines, rockets, shockblasts and without standing in too much fire. Warriors make great tanks here, with the ability to taunt the head and spell reflect.
Yogg Saron
Hard mode means not asking for help from one or more of the keepers. True hard mode means only asking for help from one (typically Thorim). Super hard mode (not described here) means no keepers at all. Effect of removing the keepers:
Mimiron:
Buffs: player gains 10% damage and 20% speed boost.
Tentacles in phase 2 are debuffed with a cast slow.
Implications: Cloud dodging is harder. 'tank ferrying' strategies are less attractive. Brain room portal teams lose extra travel time. Corrupter tentacles spam debuffs like crazy in p2 and can easily become overwhelming.
Hodir: Buffs: player gains 10% damage and
reduces incoming damage by 20%. Lifesaver iceblocks.
Implications: Mistakes (and some semi-random elements like crusher spawns) will not be tolerated and punished by death. Damage from dark volley and sara's blessing are a much more serious threat in phase 1. Damage from constrictors is more dangerous.
Freya: Buffs: player gains 10% damage and
20% healing received. Freya gives 4 sanity wells.
Implications: Sanity is a one-way trip as there are no sanity wells, sanity draining effects need to be avoided as much as possible; Malady of the Mind (jumping fear) being a key one as it is avoidable. Players are likely to be on reduced sanity entering phase 3 and getting hit by Lunatic Gaze is not an option.
Thorim: Buffs: player gains 10% damage and 20% total health. Thorim kills immortal guardians in phase 3.
Implications: phase 3 becomes a whole different ball game. Tanks will be holding multiple low health adds that can't be allowed to drain life too much. Periodically Yogg Saron will do Empowering Shadows, which will do a massive heal on any adds he's marked with Shadow Beacon - needing them to be spread apart and moved away from yogg saron.
- For each keeper removed, you lose 10% raid dps. Obviously this all adds up. DPS will need to be slick and efficient in getting onto their targets (whether top side or brain room).
- When you had +20% healing and -20% damage buffs, things like Sara's Blessing or Fervor were almost ignorable, easily healed through as random raid splash. When you get into the harder modes, you'll start needing to react specifically to those threats.
- Most common first keeper to remove is Mimiron. From there, Hodir or Freya are a matter of preference - both will reduce player survivability more significantly than Mimiron.
------ Original Post ------
Having gotten YS down in 10 man, I am looking to plan our approach to some of the hard modes. I'm not in a big rush to push the group into these, I'd like to pace things out a little, and would like a view as to which are the 'easier' hard modes.
From what I've read, XT002 and Thorim are considered to be on the easier side, along with medium mode Iron Council. With Freya and Flame Leviathan, we can turn the difficulty up in increments. However there seems to be a lot less information (guides etc) on the hard modes at the moment while the progression races are ongoing.
Anyone got advice about how to approach these? With of Freya's trees to leave up first, which of the hard modes to avoid until later?
