Ulduar Auriaya

[Panyk]

Just killed her in 10 man, and tried the strategy in the video, until we realized you don't need to kill the defender at all. It seems to be an achievement if you do, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be a need.

Also, we got Crazy Cat Lady because the original adds respawned mid fight and just started patroling where they used to.

[Utsusemi]

One thing I recommend is to make sure if you do it the video way is too make sure your DK or whatever is ready for 40k+ damage instantly so pop your IBF and have hots on etc or he will die very fast. We also ignored the cat just taunted it now and then and AOE'ed to keep it on the tanks , Easiest boss in Ulduar we have faced so far.

[Trilynne]

Great vid as always (I have a soft-spot for Lore's, being a pally tank myself ), but it seems that the 10man version has changed since the hotfix. We tried her last night, and it seem the two adds that she initially has with her are also resurrecting in the middle of the fight. This caused us to wipe pretty much instantly because we weren't expecting it, and a fear had just occurred, so people were spread out... pounce+swipefest and a quick death for just about anyone in the raid who wasn't wearing plate; their ressurection occured at the same time the Feral Defender spawned as well, so it was even worse with 3 cats flying around. I'm wondering if anyone else experienced this? If this was part of the hotfix and intentional to make her harder, well, they succeeded. Unfortunately it was close to when we stop raiding and we had to call it after only 2 attempts. Help us, Tankspot! :P My initial thoughts are that we'll have to just keep LoSing every single big cat add's body, because if those initial adds also keep respawning, that's a lot of potential for death if people twitch just far enough away from them that they're able to pounce. x.o This fight is going to get much more complicated if this isn't just a freak bug for our group.

ETA: This is apparently a bug, thank God! Hopefully we'll be able to get her down just fine next week! ^^

[Sproutster]

We had this bug on the weekend when we tried to kill her. After 4 or 5 wipes we got annoyed and took her into the room on the left. The respawned pat did not get pulled in there. Once we had her in there we one shot it.

Edit: we even got the crazy cat lady achievement as the adds had respawned while we fought her in the other room.

[Ray]

Does anyone have any tips/strats for dealing with the pull on 25 man?? A video addenum would be great or just how you would relate it to the 10 man pull. We tried the DnD pull with everyone behind the LOS point, but I got owned hard, and then the rest of the tanks. We then seperated the tanks, but the tank that was in LOS to taunt would get WTFpwned. We got to the point where I (the in sight tank) would just get roflstomped and then the other add tank would get 3 of them, we actually had some success with this, IE got the adds down and focusing on the boss.

Also, ive read that you can just ignore the feral defender as long as your grouped well and just heal through the damage. Thoughts? cuz that would really simplify it.

[Lore]

We use the D&D pull in 25-man as well, with a couple extra tricks that weren't mentioned in the video:

#1: There's a red dot on the floor right up against the wall near the corner; it's a pretty good indicator of where everyone should stand
#2: We usually run with two rogues, we have them use Tricks of the Trade to force the 2nd and 4th panther in our kill order onto our second Panther tank quickly (so the DK doesn't get wrecked before our Warrior can pick his up)
#3: All three tanks use Shield Wall or equivalent off the pull. We bloodlust and pop DPS cooldowns and aim for killing the first two panthers before shield walls wear off. At that point the panther damage is about half of what it is at the pull so it's much more manageable, plus there's only one panther on each tank.

[Titangrip]

How about handling the Feral Defender?

[Inaara]

How about handling the Feral Defender?

The Feral Defenders damage is negligible and can easily be healed through. Because of AoE damage he should die once and only once before you kill Auriaya. If you're lucky, like we were last night, the defender may even die outside of the group. If he does you do not have to reposition the raid at all.

[Titangrip]

The Feral Defenders damage is negligible and can easily be healed through. Because of AoE damage he should die once and only once before you kill Auriaya. If you're lucky, like we were last night, the defender may even die outside of the group. If he does you do not have to reposition the raid at all.

My healers suck then.

He's dying pretty fast TBH, at 75% and he's dead already.

So basically if it dies outside the raid I don't have to reposition her?

And is she bugged? She seems to keep on moving ALOT even though I'm not moving. It's annoying as hell.

[Lore]

Honestly the bigger thing about the feral defender is just that he interrupts casts, which can be rough on the healers. We usually kill him twice and then ignore him the third time, by that time the DPS will kill Auriaya before he dies anyway.

[Gertiploiss]

One of our better guilds on our server used Hunter Snake Traps to eat up the pounces for the pull. Huh.

[Kyultu]

For the 25 man pull, we used the same strategy as Lore outlined for 10 man, but taunted/MDed 2 of the panthers to different tanks and dragged them away from the group ASAP. This cut down on damage significantly. Not allowing the panthers to use pounce at any point is the key.

And is she bugged? She seems to keep on moving ALOT even though I'm not moving. It's annoying as hell.

Not really bugged, but this is obnoxious for sure. I found that she tends to dance more during the panthers swarms, not sure why (possibly adjusting position relative to other mobs, similiar to how you will have large groups of mobs spread out in a semi-circle around you when tanking 20+ of them). I made it a point to give my raid a heads up when she started fidgeting so we didn't mess up on Sonic Screech.

[Lore]

Dragging them away from the group is unnecessary and potentially bad. There's a minimum range on their pounce and they don't really do anything to anyone that hasn't pulled aggro

[Kyultu]

I've only ever seen them pounce their primary aggro target, and with DPS focused on the panthers initially in melee range threat/range should not be an issue. I see no concern with repositioning the panthers, especially compared to the benefit of reducing tank damage by almost half (comparable to a shield wall). If I however have a misunderstanding of the mechanic I would be glad to be corrected. One thing I will admit is that we used 4 tanks for that pull which made separating them very simple and may be the discrepancy between our strategies.

[Titangrip]

Thanks for all the replies.

I think I just have a DPS/Healer issue.

Is it wise to bring 4 tanks, 8 healers and 13 DPSers?

[Skyborn]

As long as the raid is careful not to cancel any heals by moving around it, I think this wall a likely a better bet.

http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/7158/auriayaledgeu.jpg

We tried this last night, among several other positions and it didn't work. He pounced right over the top of the little wall, when every raid member was completely out of LOS (supposedly). I can't, for the life of me, figure out a good place to drop the kitties that doesn't result in the defenders rezzing and instantly pouncing someone. The damage they do is negligable so it's not really an issue but... kind of a pain for casters when they get pounced, interrupted, and locked out of their spell school.

Last night we had about 10 or so attempts on her before getting her down. Initially we had problems with healers getting aggro on the pull and getting pounced through the vase statue thing you guys hid behind in the video, but once we got that sorted we tried to burn her down w/o killing the defender. The defender was fine when we were all stacked but inevitably during the fear we would all get spread out (and the tremor totem nerf to 5 second pulses really makes it inconsistent to the point of being useless) and then the cat would go pounce happy.

After 8 unsuccessful attempts w/ keeping the defender alive the whole time we swapped to killing them every time they were up and we killed her after 2 tries.

It's not documented anywhere but even though we have less total time DPSing Auriaya when you're spending time killing defenders she seemed to be dying quicker when we killed the defenders and swapped back to her. Is there a mechanic that explains this or was it simply our caster heavy group was getting interrupted less?

For all the warrior tanks out there: Berserker Rage is usable in any stance and has a short enough cooldown that it'll be available for every fear. PVP trinkets are also not a terrible idea for classes w/o fear breaks. Most people may already know this, but I think it's something that can be overlooked. Anyway, breaking fear right away to interrupt her Sentinel Blast and get her positioned/facing the majority of the raid in time for the Sonic Screech really helps.

[Kojiyama]

I would generally use a Warrior tank for her for that reason. We were using a DK for some time (and killed her last week that way easily enough), then I swapped to tanking the boss and it made it much, much simpler by the sheer fact that the boss would not move during fear at all.

We had issues leaving the Defender alive with the occassional insta-gib on a clothie from a pounce after fear so we just kill them. A bit slower of a kill, but more controlled. We use a Death Knight to grip the Defender out of the raid right before it dies and rarely had to move due to the void zones being some distance away. (Think one got popped on the group once.)

[Ray]

This fight gave us a pain for about an hour or so. We went with the initial strat of ignoring the defender and burning the boss. well, the healers complained a little so we decided to kill it 3 times. Well, this just resulted in crappier attempts. Either people would not move out in time of the voidzone, or move to early and get pounced. We had trouble timing the kill with fears. We had trouble getting everyone back to the front of the boss. It was just a total mess.

I said screw this, were going back to the ignore strat. First try dead. Really, its just on your healers to deal with the damage of the defender and your AoE to clear the adds quickly (as if they are not dealt with can wipe you due to putting healers behind). We did end up killing the defender once, which was fine as we knew it was coming with plenty of time to move.

For the pull, really, just follow the video, although we use the wall to the left of the path (by the stairs) as our LOS point. Everyone stacks on the tanks, GS up on the DK pulling. We initially would burn hero to kill the adds before tank CDs were down, but we found we didnt need too. So we switched the hero for the boss. This helped burn her faster and less defender deaths.

Raid Comp:

4 Tanks: (War MT boss)
7 Healers:
14 DPS

[Shox]

Our 10 man team saw this fight for the first time, and thanks to this thread was able to get her down on the 8th attempt. Here are some things we learned:

1. It seems nearly impossible to hold aggro on the feral defender. As a Paladin OT myself, several times I had a clean Hand of Reckoning and Avenger's Shield go off before the DPS started in on it (Coordinated through vent) and still it bounced around the raid ignoring me. With this in mind, we simply healed through its pounces and burned it down without too much concern about tanking it away from the boss.
2. Since the feral defender breaks aggro so easily, there wasn't much benefit in trying to play the LOS game. We gave it several tries with the point of the platform as seen in this video as well as the stairs. At the end of the day, if the cat didn't pounce immediately it simply walked until it was in LOS and then pounced into the group. As I stated above, it seems impossible to hold its attention and thus we just burned it down.
3. Since we weren't doing the LOS game on our last 2 attempts, we simply moved the boss to a spot which we felt would be a safe distance away from the black circles on the ground in case of being feared away.

Other than that, it's a pretty simple encounter but a fun one nonetheless.


Raid Comp:

Tanks
MT: DK
OT: Paladin

Healers
Priest
Shaman (2)

DPS
Hunter
Warrior
DK
Shadow Priest
Enh Shaman

[Shox]

We also gave one attempt to not burning down the defender and having the OT hold it... but could not keep its attention. I'm not convinced this is even possible.