Ulduar 25 MT/OT, In Tier 7.5 but getting smashed!

[Ewanar]

Hey guys, my guild just started our second 25 man Ulduar, and they put me up to be the Tank Captain / Mainish Tank.

We've managed to get down XT, Razorscale and Flame Leviathan. ( though only Flame Leviathan was a good solid kill )

I've basically been getting smashed into the ground by every boss we have tried. Ignis and Kologarn were our last boss attempts, and well basically they bent me over and did bad things to me...

What my hope is that some of the brilliant minds here can tell me what more I can do with my gear and or spec(s)

The World of Warcraft Armory

I also have:
Platehelm of the Great Wyrm - 37 stam 20 def enchant, 32 stam 2% armor meta, 8 expertise 12 stam gem

Heroes' Dreadnaught Greathelm - 37 stam 20 def enchant

Dragonstorm Breastplate - 22 def enchant, (2x) 24 stam gem

Valorous Dreadnaught Legplates - 55 Stam 22 agil, (2x) 24 stam gem

Valorous Dreadnaught Shoulderplates - 30 stam 15 resil enchant, 24 stam gem

Royal Crest of Lordaeron - 20 def

The Skull of Ruin - 20 def

Valor Medal of the First War

Essence of Gossamer

Tempered Titansteel Helm - 37 stam 20 def enchant, 32 stam 2% armor meta, 24 stam gem

I have access to the Exalted Sons of Hodir shoulder enchant aswell

[Spazlord]

Things hit pretty damn hard in Ulduar!

I went in with gear a little better than yours (helm, neck, weapon, shield particularly), and was bent over and abused by almost every mob in the instance. A few upgrades (and nerfs) later and I’m feeling a lot less squishy, although there are still trash pulls I blow cooldowns on, and the mechanics of some bosses still mean that I will be brought to within a few % of dying every second swing.

Gear to survive. Drop a few threat pieces for EH if you can. The new crafted belt and boots are awesome if you can get the mats. A new hat should be a priority (the Freya 10m one is great). Other upgrades will obviously help out too. Keep working at it.

[Cookie]

Some of the Ulduar trash mobs hit harder than Naxx bosses, so if you've just stepped out of Naxx and don't have all the BIS gear you could get, the only things you can do is either go back for better gear or tell your healers to spam more. In Ulduar, you can't really get away with waiting for hits before casting heals like you could before.

You could also run Both Ulduar10 and 25 to gear up faster, or buy orbs to make the belt and boots like it has been suggested.

[Fathom]

Well part of it is going to be that the two bosses you mentioned, Ignis and Kologarn, just have very high base melee despite being very early in the instance (Kologarn's being exacerbated by throwing the crunch armor debuff around). So partly it's a matter of numerous Uld25 bosses having enough raw damage output to 2-3 shot tanks, and healers simply cannot allow tanks to linger even at middling health without risking wipes to unlucky avoidance strings.

Some more information may be a bit helpful though, as both Ignis and Kologarn have damage buffs or defensive debuffs that you may be running afoul of.

Things like:
Are you shattering golems promptly on Ignis? (I know some guilds who run a no-shattering strategy, which is obviously more taxing on the tank, but even just being slow on shatters and allowing 2-3 golems up at once too much for new-to-Ulduar guilds)
How often are you tank swapping on Kologarn? (If you're doing it every X stacks, maybe swap to a more aggressive tank swap strategy where you swap whenever the non-active tank's debuffs drop off)

[Ewanar]

Things like:
Are you shattering golems promptly on Ignis? (I know some guilds who run a no-shattering strategy, which is obviously more taxing on the tank, but even just being slow on shatters and allowing 2-3 golems up at once too much for new-to-Ulduar guilds)
How often are you tank swapping on Kologarn? (If you're doing it every X stacks, maybe swap to a more aggressive tank swap strategy where you swap whenever the non-active tank's debuffs drop off)

For Kologarn I decided to witch every debuff, just because I was getting destroyed, though if it is avoidable it seemed like I was lasting a while without getting hit by it, which was a plus.


Ignis, our strats are strange and I would have preferred doing it the tankspot way. Usually we are shattering the golems asap. Although they do seem to run around an awful lot.
** Which if anyone has any tips on tanking the brittle ones, and moving them to the water I'd love a few tips; as my raid decides to keep the tank in the fire while tanking the golems ( sounds like a dumb idea to me honestly ) **

I shall update the first post, as my gear has changed, with the T8 legs, T8 Shoulders, and the shield... Thanks for the help, hoping to hear a few more ideas for me to work with!

[Mierzei]

usually im taking golems on ignis, and just throw def trinket from naxx, 2 pieces of fire resist grear for badges of justice gemmed for stam/def + ring from TK quest chain, and i just stand in flame, you dont feel that you are hit by golems anyway, but fire damage reduction is really useful.

Yes, standing in flame sound dumb, but trying to keep them in flame when you are out of them is impossible/risky:
1. they have low hitbox so there's small margin of error if you want to stay out of fire and keep add in it.
2. if you root add inside fire and wait for him to get molten outside, you might get slag pot'ed, and that's not something you want

[uglybbtoo]

Have you tried walk him into the fire and then stun him approach. Then you head over towards the water and heroic toss it when molten or worst case charge it and shield slam. Always found taunting it dangerous because of the ammount of healing going on they always get agro if you just taunt and if you keep taunting you hit diminishing returns and it goes immune.

Never panic if you misstime the stun and it doesn't go molten as you havent lost agro so just try it again.

[Ewanar]

Well I seemed to do a great job in Uld 10, though it is much easier by the looks of it ( strictly normal mode speaking ).

I will have to see how I do in Uld 25 on Sunday, and Monday and report back to you guys...

So so far, we shall leave this one as answered!

[Sileo]

Stop me if I'm wrong yet isn't the golden rule to have your defense sitting at 540 minimum to avoid crits? You are currently at 489 so I am guessing part of the reason you are getting hit so hard is because of your defense level?

Also, the gear you are wearing is level 70 gear...why is that? You are not in Tier 7.5 gear, you are in Tier what...5-6?

[Unger]

I agree with Sileo, you have to make sure you are crit immune first. Lose the Autoblocker and at the very least, pick up something with Stamina. I use the Essense of the Gossimer but if youre a Elixir master, you can make a great dodge trinket with 75 stamina (or something).

My guild uses two tanks on Ignis for the golems. It makes life easier. Your health is decent so have a healer assigned to you and stand in the fire. When they go molten, they have a tendency to drop their aggro table. You want to be close to pick it up. If it makes you feel better, 1-2 pieces of fire resist enchants on some tanking gear you upgraded from recently, coupled with a pally aura could get your resistance around 200. You will be fine.

I also strongly recommend that you use a single target healer for your first few progression fights in Ulduar. Pallys are great. Have priests glyph for improved guardian spirit and have them use it liberally. If you have 2 holy priests, they can keep wings on you 33% of the time as long as you dont actually use the death proc. Plus it ups their healing.

Finally, the hardest part of the fights for me seem to be the pulls. The healers need help so make sure that you are doing everything you can to get in position. Use a cooldown on a trinket, make sure you are using TWO indestructable potions (one right before pull and one during), use shield block on the initial pull, etc.

Keep tanking.... and good luck.

[Fakir]

I would suggest you use your tempered titansteel helmet for extra EH instead of the Great Wyrm one. And if you can afford it the Signet of Winter is also good for EH. You will still be crit immune with those upgrades. Other than that you really should be geared for Ulduar 25 progress raiding IMO.

[Ewanar]

Stop me if I'm wrong yet isn't the golden rule to have your defense sitting at 540 minimum to avoid crits? You are currently at 489 so I am guessing part of the reason you are getting hit so hard is because of your defense level?

Also, the gear you are wearing is level 70 gear...why is that? You are not in Tier 7.5 gear, you are in Tier what...5-6?

Tier 6... I was doing BT lol, I have better gear. To which I am wearing it now...

Lol I replaced my T6 back in december

Auto blocker was for trash and soloing... woah more block value.

[Jompalaya]

Tbh, i think it looks like a wierd mix between DK gear and the usual Warrior gear.

- Your shieldblock is low
- You don't gem properly and loose some vital gem bonuses
- Your trinket's could be trade with - Essence of Gossamer (From AN HC Hadronox)and Repelling Charge (Naxx 10 - Thaddius)
- Some enchants could be trade. Handguard enchant could easily be Armsman, 2% Threat and 10 Parry, and perhaps Bladeward on your Sword.

[Thedom]

Block in Ulduar is, for lack of a better statement, almost useless as I see it. The hits are huge and blocking at best about 2k as a warrior of huge attacks isn't very much at all. (Yes I know every little bit helps but I will wait to use block when they decide to make it worth my ilvl points) Especially with certain fights you are gonna have to have the expertise and hit to be able to keep up with your DPS if they know what they are doing so if you have ~30k health and 540 I go for some avoidance and threat stats to keep from threat capping good dpsers.

[Ewanar]

Tbh, i think it looks like a wierd mix between DK gear and the usual Warrior gear.

- Your shieldblock is low
- You don't gem properly and loose some vital gem bonuses
- Your trinket's could be trade with - Essence of Gossamer (From AN HC Hadronox)and Repelling Charge (Naxx 10 - Thaddius)
- Some enchants could be trade. Handguard enchant could easily be Armsman, 2% Threat and 10 Parry, and perhaps Bladeward on your Sword.

I know you're trying to help but, lol.

I guess because there is so much discrepancy to what I first posted it'd almost be worth it to put ALL my gear up there.

**UPDATE**
I wore all the gear I'm wearing right now in Uld 25 tonight.
XT 4 shotted me, Ignis went very well, and Razorscale raped me... Personally I'm going to start looking at how many under geared healers we have.

We had 8 healers on Ignis, 3 of which were DSpeced and asked to switch from dps, and we still couldn't stay alive.
XT, I don't know what happened... I told the healers to move into my range before the pull, and when the pull happened Ewanar wound up dead.
Razorscale, our 3 tanks were getting killed right left and center. No healers was able to keep up with the damage buff and we were dropping ( and being battle rezzed, and dropping again) like flies. ( When we killed Razorscale I had a 1 minute rez timer....)

[Crommi]

Sounds like healer issue more than anything, they need to adjust into mindset of having tank topped up after each hit before next one comes. XT-002 hits fairly hard and it's will be a block for you until healers get their stuff sorted and Hodir is very similiar in that it can easily two-shot the tank, I've had many deaths there from his 28k melee hits.

For Razorscale, you guys are swapping tank on P2 after molten armor buff reaches 2 stacks? Otherwise damage gets way too high and at 3 stacks you'll be snared and cannot kite away from blue flames.

[Ewanar]

yah, the switches, soon after myself and the 2nd of 3 tanks went down, were almost immidiate, because of the stacking buff razorcale does.

**UPDATE**
Yesterday was a full day on Kologarn. ( I didn't think it was possible but we somehow managed to spend all 3 hours on him)

I tanked the adds, and everything went peachy. Except when the raid leader decided to call out kill the left arm, too early which resulted in the adds killing the tank and the rest of the raid.

New legs which I am wearing now.