Dragon Soul - Ultraxion (Normal)

[Lore]

Welcome to the Tankspot Dragon Soul raid guide. My name is Lore, and today we'll be looking at the Ultraxion encounter. You'll need 2 tanks for this fight, and 6 healers. Any combination of DPS will work, but you'll want at least a few with strong defensive cooldowns or survival abilities.

This is one of those fights that sounds like there's a lot going on, and, well, there is, but its actually pretty simple in execution. There's lots of abilities you need to know about, but dealing with them ends up being pretty straight forward. Lets get on with it.

Abilities

Immediately upon starting the encounter, Ultraxion will pull the entire raid into the Twilight realm where he's at his most powerful. However, this also grants everyone a special, encounter-specific ability called Heroic Will. By default, this appears as a small icon in the middle of your screen, but if your UI has it hidden, you can manually keybind it under Extra Action Button 1. Anyway, when you use Heroic Will, you'll leave the Twilight realm for 5 seconds. That's important for dealing with two of his other abilities.

The first of these is Hour of Twilight. When Ultraxion casts this, everyone in the Twilight realm takes 300,000 unresistable Shadow damage. What's worse is that 3 players have to stay behind and get hit by it, or Ultraxion kills Thrall and the Dragon Aspects and everything on Azeroth dies -- starting with your raid group. We'll talk about avoiding that particularly unpleasant situation in a bit.

The other ability you'll need Heroic Will for is called Fading Light. He'll occasionally cast this on the tank and two other raid members. When the debuff fades, if you're in the Twilight Realm, you die. Again, we'll talk about that a little later.

Ultraxion has an aura called Unstable Monstrosity. This causes him to do a large amount of shadow damage split between everyone in the twilight realm. He starts out casting this every 6 seconds, but as time goes on, he casts it more and more frequently. For some reason, this also means he can't parry, so there's that at least.

If, for some reason, there's no one in melee range, he'll cast Twilight Burst. This does a rapidly increasing amount of shadow damage to the entire raid. Fortunately, there really isn't any reason to move, so if you're seeing this, you're doing something wrong.

Last up for Ultraxion, we have Twilight Eruption. After 6 minutes, he explodes, instantly wiping the raid. That means Ultraxion has a hard, 6-minute enrage timer.

Now, Thrall and the Aspects have their hands full with the Dragon Soul, but they'll still help out when they can by casting various buffs. At the start of the fight, Thrall will cast Last Defender of Azeroth on the tanks, which lowers the cooldowns of their major defensive abilities, such as Shield Wall, by 50%, and doubles their duration.

Alextrasa, Kalecgos, and Ysera will summon various crystals that healers can click to gain a specific buff. Two of each crystal will spawn. The red crystals spawn about a minute and a half into the fight, their buff will increase all healing done by 100%. A minute later, the green crystals spawn, and will cause all of your healing spells to heal the same amount again, split across the entire raid -- basically an AOE healing buff. The blue crystals spawn a minute after the green and will reduce the mana cost of all spells by 75% while increasing spell haste by 100%. Once a healer has activated a crystal, they have that buff for the rest of the fight and cannot take a different buff.

Finally, 5 minutes into the fight -- so one minute before the enrage timer -- Nozdormu will buff the entire raid with Timeloop. With this active, if something would kill you, you get healed to full instead, but you lose the buff when that happens. This is especially handy since this is the point where the raid damage starts to get out of control.

Strategy

Okay, now that we've gotten all that out of the way, lets talk about how to kill him. Like I said, it's pretty straightforward. Everyone should stand grouped up directly in front of him, just inside of melee range.

When he uses Fading Light, tanks should swap, and the three people affected by Fading Light should use Heroic Will when it's just about to expire to keep from dying.

When he casts Hour of Twilight, everyone but the two tanks and one other player should use Heroic Will to escape it. The three that stay behind will need to use some form of survival cooldown to stay alive. Tanks should easily have defensive cooldowns available thanks to Last Defender of Azeroth. The third person can be anyone with a substantial survival cooldown like Dispersion, a self-save talent such as Cheat Death or Cauterize, or even an external cooldown such as Guardian Spirit. He'll cast Hour of Twilight every 45 seconds, so make sure you assign things appropriately. If you're using 2-minute cooldowns, that means you'll need a 3-person rotation.

As for the healer buffs, remember that each healer can only have one crystal, so just assign them ahead of time based on what classes you have and what their healing assignments are. Due to the nature of the buffs, there isn't a real specific priority for who should get what buff. They all roughly work out to be a 100% increase in healing done in their own little ways.

This is as close as it gets these days to a straight-up numbers fight. Just stand still and burn as hard as you can. As long as you can handle his fairly simple mechanics, it's mostly just a question of whether or not you've got the raw throughput that it takes to bring him down.

If you'd like more information on this or any other Dragon Soul encounter, head over to Tankspot.com and click the Movies link at the top of the page. Thanks for watching, and good luck.

[Wurtane]

You don't necessarily have to have both tanks in for Hour of Twilight. You mainly just need one, provided you have enough dps with defensive CDs to set up a rotation. If you're low on said dps, you'd better use 2 tanks and one dps with a defensive CD.

[Rowdy]

For 10-man: if you have trouble beating the enrage, try only using two healers. You gain a lot of DPS and the raid damage isn´t that high until the end anyway and this is where the various buffs help you out. Also remember that one healer is able to take two of the healing buffs then

[Jericho]

The new video style is definitely a huge plus. However, there are a number of little things that could make it better for the future.

1) The biggest issue in the video is the lack of visually showing the Heroic Will graphics/button. Yes, like you said in the video's narration, you can keybind this by going into the keybinds. It seems that the holy paladin whose PoV the video is taken from has gone and done just that. However, as these videos will now be a major learning tool for people who use the LFR tool, it is a huge disservice to not show the button in its default (or near default) position and visual.

2) With this new visual style and layout, I find it really disappointing that the focus is still 100% on the 25 man version of the encounter. Taking a short "This is what differs in 10man" portion at the end of the video would greatly increase the value of the guide itself.

3) Personally, I enjoyed Alliena's video guides quite a bit and found valuable information from watching the entire fight. Yes, the entire fight is included in this video, but I had always enjoyed her addition of the entire fight in normal speed with or without vent chatter tacked on to the guide at the end.

For 10-man: if you have trouble beating the enrage, try only using two healers. You gain a lot of DPS and the raid damage isn´t that high until the end anyway and this is where the various buffs help you out. Also remember that one healer is able to take two of the healing buffs then

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that you can not keep two of the buffs simultaneously. I was not sure if you could take a second and replace the first as when I did this fight on my healer I was assigned blue and didn't think about taking another before that.

[Lognar]

The healing buffs unfortunately do not stack though, but still good to two heal for extra dps!

[Rowdy]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that you can not keep two of the buffs simultaneously. I was not sure if you could take a second and replace the first as when I did this fight on my healer I was assigned blue and didn't think about taking another before that.

You are right. I made it sound like they stack. I just wanted to point out that it may be beneficiary to use two of them on one healer after one another, depending on the class or course

[CoolNitro]

Yea the buffs do not stack but unlike what Lore said healers can physically pick up a second buff but will lose the ability of the first one well at least on 10 mans.

Also for 10 mans it can easily be done two healer with decent gear but with that said even with decent gear and two healing it we still only managed to down him a few seconds before the enrage so imo healer gear check is lower then dps.


As for the vids them self I am disappointed at the lack of 10 man information and the missing little details like what the button looks like or even the buffs for example, Tankspot has always aimed for live content in their guides for accuracy and they seamed to be aimed for the larger audience by giving specific info on encounters and what to watch out for, but as it is now they come across as guides for more elite raiders who don't need to be told everything which isn't a bad thing really if you want to go that route but I don't see the guides as very helpful or informative.

Basically it's a vid showing roughly what the room looks like with Lore reading the encounter journal with a small explanation on how to handle it, it just feels like its missing that new to raiding look here factor that brought most of us to Tankspot.

[Outbackjack]

10 man, Tank PoV videos coming as soon as I get some decent video taken.

[Quinafoi]

10 man differences...

1. There is one of each of the types of healing buffs instead of two.

2. Only one person needs to soak Hour of Twilight which will generally be the current tank with aggro. Even if you have DPS with cooldowns you could mix into the rotation this creates unnecessary complexity and it's just easier for the tank to take it consistently.

3. Fading Light is applied to the current tank and one DPS instead of two DPS. This is cast twice between each Hour of Twilight after the first. This means if you have the current tank soak Hour of Twilight, it will always be the same tank, whichever tank starts first. Your tank however should be fine simply alternating which major cooldowns they use because of the reduced cooldown duration and increased effective duration.

That's pretty much it for differences in 10 man. As far as strategy is concerned its very similar, everyone pile up for easier AoE healing and burn the hell out of the boss.


There is one minor mistake in this guide...

The wipe occurs at 6 minutes and 5 seconds because Twilight Eruption is a 5 second cast that starts at the 6 minute mark. A minor detail but don't freak out if you see your first kill at just above 6 minutes.

[Quinafoi]

This fight is a good fight for the Safeguard talent as well if you have a Protection Warrior off tank that doesn't stay for Hour of Twilight because that is one additional external cooldown for the soaker which can be applied every time. Shouldn't be necessary, but it does help.

[Aymon]

You should probably consider consulting the guys from Fatboss to collaborate with Tankspot for 10m guides... :P

I can see them fitting perfectly!

As said above in 10m you only need one person soaking Hour of Twilight and as far as I know rogues can use Feint to counter it.

Like the new format, although I think the guides could be a little more "in depth"!
On the other hand I understand, that they are supposed to be short explanations when you're standing in front of the boss!

[lubz]

Does the damage have to be "soaked", or can it be avoided completely by bubble or iceblock?

[Parasight]

This video is different. And I like it. This is a good direction for the future of videos. Instead of recording a boss kill and then turning it into a strategy guide you've made a strategy guide from the beginning.

It's refreshing to see the guide cover the things that are important. Seeing a boss kill really doesn't give you much information whereas the edited text to complement the video is extremely helpful. Going over the mechanics, how to navigate the fight and listing them while the fight is playing is superb.

I don't think a ten man version is often necessary. Personally, I'm in a ten man group and the 25 man videos explain what I need to know. Really, all you need to do is cover relevant mechanics.

Short videos are good. We don't need to see you dpsing a boss. People who come to watch the videos should know enough to navigate their class. We need to know what to react to and what to expect. A five minute video on a 15 minute fight should suffice. It makes for a better video.

Don't be afraid to use raid markers in the videos to over explain things. Some things that seem self evident to some people are not always crystal clear. Pausing a kill video and pointing something out can be very effective.

Remember, the goal is to educate. Simply showing the video rarely explains anything. Aliena's videos were nice, and I commend her past work, but her voice over explainations didn't always point out the exact thing she was talking about. It was a record of a boss kill with the narrator going back and explaining something that isn't always obvious. I wish I could provide concrete examples right now, but I can't off the top of my head.

Make the guides nice. It is nice to have a guide as soon as possible but consider your audience. The 'hardcore' teams will use the guides as a reference at times but the 'casual' raider will benefit most from the videos. Make sure the guides are clear, concise, and high quality. What I'm trying to say is--don't sacrifice any quality to get them out there as fast as possible. Video guides will be more helpful to more people the clearer they are.

I'm sure the change in approach requires a lot more work, especially editting. Keep up the good work, this one looks nice.

May your dreams be wet and your drops be purple.

[Dreador]

Great guide, we did this guy last night. It's like Patchwerk meets Kologarn with a few nifty caveats thrown in to make it fun.

[Gregasaurous]

I like that the guides are short, direct, and to the point. BUT, I would also like the actual fight to be tagged on to the end. Yeah, if all you need is a strategy refresher, short video=win. But if you're trying to get a feel for the fight, a full length version of the fight is nice.
Also sometimes there really are enough differences between 10m and 25m to mention them, even though for the most part it's just scaling back of numbers and adjusting personnel appropriately. Especially because in a 10m raid often times a lot more precision is required. Though admittedly Blizz did seem to manage to make them a little more equal in difficulty and in execution for 4.3

[Rukoshi]

It should be noted that tanks will need to taunt swap because after using heroic will you generate no threat for 10 seconds. To counter this, once one of your tanks gets the fade to twilight debuff, have the other tank taunt off. Also, in 10-man, you only need one of your tanks to stay out and you should rotate which one should do it.

[Lognar]

It should be noted that tanks will need to taunt swap because after using heroic will you generate no threat for 10 seconds. To counter this, once one of your tanks gets the fade to twilight debuff, have the other tank taunt off. Also, in 10-man, you only need one of your tanks to stay out and you should rotate which one should do it.

We noted this in all the guides etc - However on our attempts I always taunted back after returning from the normal realm after fading light, and never had issues losing threat. Has anyone else experienced this?

[mekell]

We havent defeated this encounter yet, just havnet quite got the raw dps output in our attempts. We were attempting to 3 heal it, got him to 6% before enrage.

However, as a note, we had the same tank (Bear) eat every Hour of Twilight. Some combination of his CD's were always up to survive it. We never had threat issues. Since he would eat every HOT he would always get the first Fading LIght too (since he was already tanking). This made it slightly easier for our tanks to deal with who was going out and staying in since it was the same every time...

Hour of Twilight (Bear stays in)
Bear gets Fading LIght, Paladin taunts and stays in
Paladin Gets fading LIght, Bear taunts and stays in
Hour of Twilight (Bear stays in)

Rinse repeat. Not that the other way was overly complicated either, this just made it easier for us.

[Darksend]

Hour of Twilight (Bear stays in)
Bear gets Fading LIght, Paladin taunts and stays in
Paladin Gets fading LIght, Bear taunts and stays in
Hour of Twilight (Bear stays in)

This is how my raid does it as well, except its bear tank a and bear tank b. With the thrall blessing I simply rotated barkskin with either shield wall or last stand, one of which was up every HOT. Makes things much easier to manage.

[Shambells]

For the not completely hardcore raiders out there, don't be fooled by the consensus of everyone that killed DW week one: this fight is *irritating*. If you don't always raid with the same people, this boss is going to make you bash your face in. At least as far as 10 man, there is absolutely zero room for error for normal mode raiders. If you have a dps die for any reason (cough Fading light) you will most likely not make the enrage timer. This means when you only have nine of your raiders show up you're screwed. This fight may be this expansions Thaddius : raid leaders /rage quit at pols inability to click ONE button an average of every 30 seconds. We killed him last week and spent two hours wiping to him last night because I couldn't find a non retarded pug. I absolutely despise normal mode bosses that don't let me bring a pug (/glare@Thaddius). If it was heroic I'd be ok with it.

PS to clarify I kicked the first pug after he died 8 consecutive times to the first hour of twilight. Then the second pug would waste 3 minutes of my time and die right before hero. Third pug lived the whole fight but only pulled 19k. We wiped four times <1%. Consecutively. I am already sure I found my new hated boss this tier.

Finally, lest someone say that I didn't post anything useful: protip: set up a raid CD rotation starting with HoT#6. It becomes unhealable at that point, at least on 10 man. We needed three raid CD's to kill him last week. In 10 man, if you didn't go 6/7 or 7/7 heroic last tier, you'll need to two heal this to meet the enrage timer. Avg item level of my raid, 385 last week when we killed him 4 seconds from he enrage. Just some numbers for you.
Moar numbers I just pulled up. Avg dps from kill (6 dps) : ~ 24k. Red healer HPS : 49k. Green healer HPS : 28k. Approx. overhealing : 12%. Fight duration : 5:56. Both healers were oom at 10 seconds before kill with all mana tricks exhausted. No deaths.
From a personal experience : this was easily the hardest encounter I've ever healed on my shaman. That may just be my lack of healing experience but take it for what you will.