Ulduar Kologarn

[Brun]

It seems that he can't look straight down (the position where you have your tanks as usually). It might be bugged but if you stack up the entire raid at that position you can simply zerg, without having to watch the eye beams at all.

(note that I didn't confirm this myself yet, it was apparantly done this way by another guild on our server)

Not true, our MT, or someone near him (we think it might have been a Hunter Pet, or a random melee no one saw) got Eye-Beamed and died. So he definitely does have the ability to Eye-Beam close enough to the the tank to kill him.

[akira5284]

I wanted to contribute everything we learned about this fight tonight. I apologize if I repeat anything that was in the video or posted already.

Our raid setup for 10-man was:

2 Holy Pallies, Holy Priest, Hunter, Boomkin, Ret Pally, DK, 2 Prot Warriors, Enhancement Shaman.

Positioning:

Since we had 5 ranged and they were placed on the diamonds one square into the room. One person per diamond. This made it so the person could tell who was getting laser eyes and then that persn would turn and run out of the room and down the stairs until the eyes stopped focusing. Then they would return to their spot.

MT/Melee were on Kologarn in front of his chest. Melee must face his chest in order to DPS the arms.

When Elementals spawned the OT would grab them and tank them to the left of the right arm.

Strategy:

We used the strategy mentioned in the video. Take out the right arm any time it's up, else work on Kologarn.

To go into details:

Healers: 2 Healers focused on MT with one healer focusing on Raid after shockwaves. Healers did need good situational awareness in case one healer has to run away from eye or gets grabbed. If laser eyes ever focused a healer they would run out the room and down the stairs.

Ranged DPS: Stood on their diamond and DPSed the arm until dead. Once dead, they would AOE the rock elementals. Once all elementals are dead, they would DPS Kologarn until arm respawned. If they were ever the target of laser eyes, they would run out of the room until it stopped.

Melee DPS: Stood still and DPSed are or DPSed Kologarn. Melee did not have to move at all. Just faced his chest and changed targets as needed.

Tanks: Both tanks stood in front of Kologarn and switched aggro by taunting if 2 armor debuffs were put on a tank. When arm died and rock elementals came out, whichever tank is not tanking picked up the adds. They were tanked away from the melee. During this time the Add tank has to watch out for being focused by eyes. Tanks did not switch aggro on Kologarn until all the adds were dead. With two healers focusing on the Kologarn tank it is possible to have 2 debuffs and live, cooldowns also helped.

Things to NOT do:

1) We had several issues with running left/right to avoid eye beams. It seems that the beams would constantly hit, so only running backwards was 100% ok.

2) Tank should never taunt Kologarn if not in melee range. Accidentally hit AOE taunt while tanking adds and it aggroed the boss. Since the tank is not in melee range he will do Petrify breath. Basically, whoever has aggro must be in his melee range.

3) Do not try to put casters in Kologarn's melee range, he interrupt casting.

4) Do not stack multiple people on the same ranged spot. This will lead to confusion as to who the eye beam is coming for.


Summary:

2 Tanks, 3 Healers, 5 DPS worked best for us. Ranged were spread out in a line and if they got eye beams they would run out of the room. Melee DPS does not move and just have to switch targets while facing Kologarn's Chest. Ranged AOEs adds when they come out. Tanks rotate boss after 2 debuffs unless OT is tanking adds, then MT just pops a cooldown until adds are dead, then the switch.

I hope I help someone with this and I hope everyone who tries this fight has a blast. Enjoy everyone.

[Ciderhelm]

Addendum up!

[Squashed]

The rubble that spawn after the Right Arm dies do some AoE damage. Our first 10man attempt we thought this was due to when they died. Reading some information on wowhead.com and here on tankspot it appears that it is from Stone Nova, which the Rubble casts somewhat randomly.

Can anyone confirm that the stone-rubble do not have an AoE on death ability, and is 100% safe to ranged AoE them down.

[bludwork]

Just wanted to add for the 25man something very important when tanking the adds. In several videos the tank just stands there and tanks all the adds. This is wrong! Stone nova is a pulsating aoe effect. If you stand in the aoe your stacking debuff can get as high as 50% and result in lots of damage.

When tanking the adds on heroic keep moving them in a circle on the left side constantly moving out of the stone nova aoe. This way it does not stack more than 2-3 times healing you is relatively light and healers can focus on keeping the rest of the raid alive + being more mobile.

[Noraxe]

Sen'jin (Home of Premonition with a handful of world firsts) had a few hours of downtime.

Ensidia mentioned many hours of down time in their posts.

So no. Servers do not get special treatment.

On Magtheridon, we had to wait 30++ minutes if we wiped.
When trying to enter Ulduar we got the message "The instance can not be found".

So we got 2 attempts on Flame and 2 on Ignis and we wiped once on the trash to ignis.
The flame wipe was due to someone thought it would be fun to explore up the ramp to the left while driving to the gates >_<

[Kyultu]

Does anyone know if the tank can avoid the 25% armor debuff he places on them or how long its duration is? Thanks!

I'm not sure whether it is an avoidance or resist mechanic (haven't gone through logs of the fight yet, my money is on it following melee mechanics though) but it is possible for Kologarn to fail to apply it to a tank. The debuff lasts 45 seconds and has fallen off of me before a second application and we managed to delay the tank switch.

You will also notice the animation for the attack is different depending on whether Kologarn successfully applies the debuff or not. He will always show the "overhead slam" animation where he slams the ground around you with the clenched fist. The "Explosion" graphic only seems to occur if the debuff is actually applied and will give you a more immediate indication of when you need to swap tanks or use cooldowns.

I'd be curious to know whether the same is true of audio during the encounter (I don't play with sound so I can't comment on that personally).

[law90026]

Comments:

1) Yes, the 25% armour debuff can be avoided. It fell off me a few times and seldom stacked higher than 2.
2) We experienced Squeeze Lifeless because we tried just dps'ing the body only for the Achievement. Basically, whoever is being squeezed dies after 10-15s since they take 80+k damage. The Achievement therefore is a dps race from what I can see.

If you died earlier, it's probably from the constant 5k damage (check your logs to see what killed you, Squeeze Lifeless is 80+k).

[Perfectguns]

Throughout this encounter we realized the left hand was taking damage every single time it performed a shockweave. At some point the right hand was down we switched to the left hand which had roughly 120k at that time and burned heroism while the boss had about 1mil hp and downed him before he respawned any of his hands. 10mans. Made it a lot easier because for some odd reason the boss he would always target really weak armour or either almost dead player at that point during the encounter.

EDIT: After discussion with our raid, we are currently not sure if whether or not the hand was dealing himself damage by swiping the raid, or because we had a druid tanking with berserk on to try to deal additional damage to the hand. I doubt the druid could of done that much damage on the berserk time in the event that berserk had enough range to reach additional target from his position which was in the middle of the boss. Will post more info as soon as we have anything new.

[lazor]

Anyone know what mod is that on the lower right hand side on the video with the damage and heals scrolling upwards with the icons?

[dontazemebro]

from what i've found, kologard's hit box is rather large and melee players can easily target any arm or torso by just being in range of any of the targets.

for example, we had our melee standing under the "Left Arm" hitting the "Right Arm" and the off-tank standing under the "Right Arm" ready to pick up the rubble.

also, for dealing with the eyes we used a "Down and Out" strategy by having our ranged line up about 5 yards apart from another.

when using his laser attack, he places two lasers at the targets' feet. when this occurred, we had that player step forward a few steps then strife right or left.

this sort of organization helped us a lot with avoiding extra damage.

[agonis]

i've read here that you can avoid the 25% debuff.
You mean it is resistable, or there are some tricks behind the skill he uses while applying the debuff, a part from dodging\parrying the hit?

[Kyultu]

It is a "On next melee attack" type of ability (like Heroic Strike or Maul) so a dodge, parry or miss would prevent the attack from causing damage and applying the debuff. There is no trick to it, but I would wear an avoidance set for the encounter (theoretically your overall effective health would actually scale with your avoidance).

[Jahira]

Couple things that helped us.

As has been previously noted, both hands and the body share the same hit box. We loosely clump the melee on the left arm and DPS down the right, moving on to the body afterward. This allows the melee to be nowhere near the rumble pack when it spawns. This also allows attacks that strike multiple targets to pull triple duty.

We usually do a tank swap when his right arm is at 25-30%, even if the tank only has one debuff. This allows a fresh tank to be on the boss when the pack shows up and we don't have to worry about excessive stacks while AoEing down the pack.

It also helps if the tank doesn't run off the edge... just saying... not that I know anyone who did that...

[Damonvile]

It seems that he can't look straight down (the position where you have your tanks as usually). It might be bugged but if you stack up the entire raid at that position you can simply zerg, without having to watch the eye beams at all.

(note that I didn't confirm this myself yet, it was apparantly done this way by another guild on our server)

His armor crush ability locks out spell casters so healers and caster dps can't stand in melee range.

[viper57728]

Hey I hope this works, and I hope this doesn't break any rules this forum has. While I find the videos to be the easiest to understand, along side the excellent commentary by the tankspot team, my guild and some others I have pugged with in this game, have proven that some things need to be clarified even more. I took it upon myself to go ahead and draw up a real quick photoshop piece to display the most important aspecs of this fight, and what strat / positioning worked flawlessly for us. This is for 10-man only, I have no idea the validity of it for 25-man, so don't hold it against me if you try this on 25 and get rocked.



If there is another place I should be posting information like this, feel free to move it or if this violates any terms / agreeances then feel free to delete it, just thought this could be something GM's could post on their guild forum to help further clarify a strat.

Also, I have some more drawn up very similar to this for other bosses such as Auriya. Basically any boss that involves placement of raid members that could otherwise be easier to see by a drawing I will be doing. That said, bosses like Flame Leviathan I will be skipping since there really is no set positioning. If you'd all like to see more, just let me know and I will post them in the respective threads / where ever a forum leader tells me too =)

Thanks all,

Sinmore.

[kelestalas]

what addons are the ret pally using? is it possible to get a full list?

[winnetou]

Stone Grip - Spell - World of Warcraft will deal damage for 10 seconds. If the hand manages to apply a 10th damage tick, the target is released and Squeezed Lifeless - Spell - World of Warcraft is applied to finish it off, regardless of current health.
These spells and values are the heroic versions.

[Bokeh]

Just wanted to add for the 25man something very important when tanking the adds. In several videos the tank just stands there and tanks all the adds. This is wrong! Stone nova is a pulsating aoe effect. If you stand in the aoe your stacking debuff can get as high as 50% and result in lots of damage.

When tanking the adds on heroic keep moving them in a circle on the left side constantly moving out of the stone nova aoe. This way it does not stack more than 2-3 times healing you is relatively light and healers can focus on keeping the rest of the raid alive + being more mobile.

If you move around it just becomes a pain for the aoe to bring them down fast. On 25, we have a single holy paladin healing me through the adds, if you rotate shockwave into shield block into last stand into shield wall (both glyphed) you hardly take any serious damage from the adds, and by the time the next wave of adds comes your shield wall and last stand should be off cooldown again. destro locks can add in a shadowfury if they're specced into it. Just stand still, take the beating like a man and don't forget to mute yourself on vent when you cry like a little girl :P

[Havard]

Regarding the recommendation to use Dampen Magic on the ranged, are the ranged raid members meant to take it off if grabbed by Stone Grip? Or did you find that keeping people in Stone Grip wasn't an issue, and thus have them leave it on?

Edit: For clarity, I'm referring to the recommendation found in the Addendum video guide.