Originally Posted by
Aliena (25-man)
Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Ulduar raid guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll go over the strategy we use for the 25-man version of Knock Knock Knock on Wood, Freya's hard mode that you access by leaving all three Elders alive.
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Unlike the Sartharion 3 drake fight, any Elder you leave up in the Freya encounter will not join the fight directly, but each one of them gives Freya substantial buffs and new abilities.
Elder Ironbranch will give Freya the ability "Iron Roots". This is cast on three random raid members at a time and will root them in place as well as deal around 9000 damage every 2 seconds to the target. Currently, Iron Roots can be dispelled by most snare-breaking abilities such as a paladin's hand of freedom and druid shapeshift. They're also attackable and can be killed by regular DPS should your raid not be able to dispel them. Either way they need to be disposed of quickly.
Additionally, leaving him up increases physical damage dealt by adds by 50%.
Leaving Elder Stonebark up enables Freya to cast "Ground Tremor", which is a 2-second cast spell that deals around 13k damage to every raid member and interrupts and causes a lockout of 6 seconds for any spell school being cast at the time. Also, leaving him up increases Freya's physical damage dealt by 75%.
Elder Brightleaf lends Freya the ability "Solar Flare" which results in three Sunbeams popping up simultaneously that inflict 14000 damage every 2 seconds to anyone standing near one. Additionally, magic damage dealt by Freya and her adds is increased by 60%.
With all three Elders up, Freya and all her adds also gain 72% more health. Obviously that makes the DPS requirement a little more steep because you will need more time for each add phase.
Let me go over some general hints before I explain the different add phases. To make this fight work for you, you have to add efficiency and synergy to your raid group. Before the fight starts, assign people to little groups that spread around Freya in a circle. Each camp should have a healer and about 2 ranged dps. That way, you should never have more than three people that need to move from a Solar Flare and you also (ideally) won't have everyone running to the same mushroom in a Conservator phase.
Speaking of the Ancient Conservator phase, that's the huge tree you're seeing in the background. For this phase, spread out under the mushrooms as best as you can. Look for a new one when the shroom you're under gets big before it disappears, you want to minimize movement from mushroom to mushroom. Sometimes spawns are terrible and you can't do much about that, but you want to try and not clump up to avoid people taking massive damage from Nature's Fury. The person that gets targetted by it needs to move to a safe spot as soon as possible.
Under ideal circumstances that safe spot is a mushroom with no one else under it, but if people are clumped, just move away from them while staying in range of at least one healer. Communication is key here. If a tank gets targetted, obviously people near him or her have to move. The safe zone below a mushroom is fairly big, so take advantage of that and don't stand right on top of someone else unless you can't help it at all.
In the lasher phase the raid needs to clump up on Freya. Use targetted AoE and bring all lashers down to 20% health or less. Then have a tank AoE taunt all lashers from a range while your raid runs into the opposite direction. At this point they need to be burned down quickly and it's advised to have hunters lay down some frost traps or to use improved blizzard to snare the remaining lashers before they run off again and explode on someone. It may be a little difficult to figure out at first, but once you get some practice it's a fairly safe way to deal with lashers.
Be ready to deal with Solar Flares that may pop up while everyone is clumped. Your raid has to pay close attention and be ready to move and re-adjust if one or even multiple Flares pop on them. This is the greatest danger of the lasher phase. I find it easiest to pan up my camera and look straight down onto my character to spot Flares, but that comes down to personal preference.
For the elemental adds, we assign a Death Knight to Chains of Ice-kite the Snaplasher over and over and have him ready to taunt it if someone else draws aggro. Our offtank picks up the other two. Burn them down evenly. Of course, here too - communication is key. If you fail to kill them within 10 seconds of each other, they will ressurrect and you're most likely facing a wipe.
The little trees that pop up occassionally are called Eonar's Gift and should always have highest kill priority. If they manage to bloom they heal Freya and any adds that are currently up for a significant chunk of health.
You should save Bloodlust or Heroism for the second Conservator phase. This is most likely where you'll have to do some catch-up.
There are also some general tips I can give for phase 1 from a healing perspective. For one, if you're using Grid, you should also have GridStatusRaidDebuff installed. This lets you know very easily who's afflicted by Nature's Fury and Iron Roots and hence will need more heals or even an emergency save if Ground Tremor is coming up at the same time. Speaking of Ground Tremor, always watch its cooldown timer closely and make good use of instant spells during its cast. Disc priests are very useful raid healers in this encounter to counteract damage spikes.
Once you finish all six add phases, phase 2 starts and you can now finally start killing Freya. We split our raid into a melee and a ranged team. Melee stay north, ranged go south. Once Freya throws out her bombs, both teams simultaneously move to the left or the right, whichever side they aren't currently on. This minimizes movement and chaos. However, Freya will still cast Solar Flare, Ground Tremor and Iron Roots. Do make sure not to forget to break Iron Root targets out, this is especially important coupled with bombs.
The fight is very straightforward at this point however and if you haven't had many deaths, it should be a clean kill from here on out.
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