[WoW] 3.1 - Ulduar

[Needless]

Really.. IC as 2nd hardest group? Our 25 man wipes on it a lot more than we should considering we do it on a weekly basis but Id say freya is certainly harder than steelbreaker. Then again we havent put much effort into freya yet in terms of hardmodes

Finally downed mimiron 10 last night took about an hour before we decided phase 3 was fucking us too much so we put myself the tank and a dk on ground adds and BL at the start of the phase to get the casters to just burn the head without bringing him to the ground. Once we tried that we downed him fairly easily. That fight is awesome, im looking forward to Yogg +1, then getting my drake nextweek due to not having disarmed >_>

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by spronk

in 10 man, all hard modes except mimiron are fairly easy and killable within 5 attempts. mimiron will take most groups 3-5 hours first try, post nerf.

in 25 man, the order is (imo) XT, FL4 (pyrite is key, put 3 ppl on 2 demolishers), hodir (storm your casters), thorim, freya+3, vezaz/yogg+1/council, mimiron.

25 man hard modes are a lot more difficult than 10 man hards, the raid damage is much more intense and the DPS requirements much tighter.

No idea how you see IC as that hard. That encounter is an epic joke, it's all positioning and dps with some cooldowns tied in to keep tanks alive.

Not sure Mimiron is the most difficult encounter post-Nerf anymore either. This may be true in 10man, but I'm not 100% sure in 25man.

[regret]

Did he not specify 25-man, something you as much as admit to knowing fuck all about?

[Xequecal]

Originally Posted by Vinen

No idea how you see IC as that hard. That encounter is an epic joke, it's all positioning and dps with some cooldowns tied in to keep tanks alive.

Not sure Mimiron is the most difficult encounter post-Nerf anymore either. This may be true in 10man, but I'm not 100% sure in 25man.

IC 25-man hard is incredibly difficult compared to 10-man. Your tanks explode after 30 seconds and he hits ridiculously hard. After your first tank explodes his standard melee hits hit for over 40k. Fusion Punch is 35k base. With 2 adds dead it hits for 52,500, then goes up to 65,625, 78,750, 91,875 as your tanks die. You need some kind of cooldown for every single Fusion Punch and after 2 tanks die you need 2-3 cooldowns for every single Fusion Punch. To kill him in 2 minutes with 6 healers your DPS need to average 5500 dps each, it's NOT easy. You need top-geared tanks or you won't even get past 1:00, his standard melee can one-shot tanks not in pretty much full normal Ulduar25 gear after you've had two tanks drop.

[spronk]

25 man IC phase 3 (after first two guys are down) is very difficult imo, the MT damage is absolutely insane (upwards of 50-80k on plate w/o resists & cooldowns after 1-2 deaths), its a DPS race, there is a shit-ton of AOE dmg going on, and if anyone dies it probably means a wipe (boss heals for a good chunk and he does more damage to MT). This is all post nerf as well, in the first few weeks of ulduar it was a joke encounter since there were a million exploits (voidwalker tanking, bubble hearthing tanks, pets taunting right before explodes, etc). I put it in the same league as vezax/yogg+1, since vezax/yogg depends on your entire raid being smart whereas IC is more about very good tanks/healers. I also don't know if its bugged or not, usually he puts that static charge (or whatever its called) on the farthest person out in p2, but we've seen him put it on melee and other people during p3.

Freya+3 is also similar in that the raid damage is heavily ramped up from beams, roots, etc. You can however mitigate some of it by making sure the 3-add phase always has interrupters on storm/water, using raid-wide sacrifice/GS at end of little adds phase, etc.

Either way 25 man hard modes are significantly harder than 10 mans, rusted proto drake is a nice achievement but you have to really bow down at the people who have the 25 man version. The numbers bear it out as well, according to guildox 0.41% of guilds have done 25 man Heroic Glory, and 4% have done 10 man Glory - an order of magnitude difference!!

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

IC 25-man hard is incredibly difficult compared to 10-man. Your tanks explode after 30 seconds and he hits ridiculously hard. After your first tank explodes his standard melee hits hit for over 40k. Fusion Punch is 35k base. With 2 adds dead it hits for 52,500, then goes up to 65,625, 78,750, 91,875 as your tanks die. You need some kind of cooldown for every single Fusion Punch and after 2 tanks die you need 2-3 cooldowns for every single Fusion Punch. To kill him in 2 minutes with 6 healers your DPS need to average 5500 dps each, it's NOT easy. You need top-geared tanks or you won't even get past 1:00, his standard melee can one-shot tanks not in pretty much full normal Ulduar25 gear after you've had two tanks drop.

I know how 25man Steelbreaker works. He took my guild 1 night of attempts once Ulduar became playable on Stormrage. He's not really that bad... We aren't really the most skilled guild either. Carry a few people.

We just run 2 Tanks and kill him 3 Tank phases.

The 10man is utter faceroll. We beat it this weak without anyone dying to the encounter. (I tank first! finally got the chance to give someone an explosive hug)

[Xequecal]

Originally Posted by Vinen

I know how 25man Steelbreaker works. He took my guild 1 night of attempts once Ulduar became playable on Stormrage. He's not really that bad... We aren't really the most skilled guild either. Carry a few people.

We just run 2 Tanks and kill him 3 Tank phases.

The 10man is utter faceroll. We beat it this weak without anyone dying to the encounter. (I tank first! finally got the chance to give someone an explosive hug)

You kill 25-man Steelbreaker in under 90 seconds? I can't even imagine that. That's like 6500 DPS each from all your DPS.

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

You kill 25-man Steelbreaker in under 90 seconds? I can't even imagine that. That's like 6500 DPS each from all your DPS.

/shrug
Here is a parse
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

A few of us switch to Steelbreaker early to get debuffs, bleeds, etc up before the phase starts.

[Vardisk]

If you really want to cheese IC25 hardmode, you kill Stormcaller first, then bring Runemaster down to 5% health and wait for him to drop a fresh rune (can get all the raid debuffs up on Steelbreaker while waiting for the rune to drop). Quickly kill him, and then get on Steelbreaker with every single DPSer standing on the rune, hit Heroism, blow all your cooldowns and consumables and he just falls over. This week we killed him with only one tank death.

[Vardisk]

I think I'd have to list 25 man hards, after all nerfs, including Mimiron:

Flame Leviathan < Deconstructor < Thorim < Hodir < Vezax < Mimiron < Yogg-3 < Steelbreaker < < < < < Algalon < Freya < < < < < < < < < Yogg-4

After all their other nerfings, Freya is really due for a nerfing. She just feels ridiculously harder than the other hard modes. And apparently there are several nerfs for her up on the current build of the PTR, it's just a matter of whether she'll got hotfixed or her changes are waiting till some future patch. Oh and the obvious Yogg-4 nerf bat coming soon to a theatre near you.

Come to think of it, Yogg-3 gives hard mode loot. Maybe they won't nerf him? They might just leave him as is and he'll be kind of a "when you have sufficient gear in the future" kind of thing. Or maybe so all the lorelol people that complain about key lore characters getting killed by "mere mortals" will shut up.

Although as I remember in WC3, all the big time heroes (Arthas, Kel'Thuzad, Sylvanas, Illidan, Thrall, etc) could be killed by groups of much smaller size than 25/40 man raids.


edit - And Algalon is only that high up due to his timer. Without that he's about as hard as Vezax hardmode.

[Mist]

Yogg 4 doesn't drop any kind of progression loot at all. I think they don't mind that achievement being completable until possibly after Arthas is dead. Infact, that whole 'raid lockout extension' thing might be put in there specifically so that guilds can lock themselves into a cleared Ulduar and still go back and work on Yogg 4 when they're done farming Coliseum for the week.

[mek]

I think everyone read my comment backwards. Sorry - things were listed easiest to hardest. so:

EASIEST <-> XT - FL - IC - THORIM - HODIR - FREYA - YOGG+1 - MIMIRON - YOGG+0 <-> HARDEST

I don't think anyone actually wants to argue with that order. Order varies somewhat if your skillsets are unevenly distributed. eg. if half your healers suck, Hodir will be easy for you since you can bench the baddies.

And yeah, IC is pretty much a joke in 10man, but in 25man is not. Though cheesing rune of power is definitely the way to do it.

[Vardisk]

Originally Posted by mek

EASIEST <-> XT - FL - IC - THORIM - HODIR - FREYA - YOGG+1 - MIMIRON - YOGG+0 <-> HARDEST

I don't think anyone actually wants to argue with that order.

Sure I will. Mimiron is a joke now, with his nerfs. Yogg with Thorim up is pretty damn easy as well. Meanwhile Freya of all bosses is one of the hardest encounters in the damn zone.

[Manatra]

Originally Posted by Vardisk

Sure I will. Mimiron is a joke now, with his nerfs. Yogg with Thorim up is pretty damn easy as well. Meanwhile Freya of all bosses is one of the hardest encounters in the damn zone.

Give me some agent orange.

[Angerz]

Originally Posted by mek

EASIEST <-> XT - FL - IC - THORIM - HODIR - FREYA - YOGG+1 - MIMIRON - YOGG+0 <-> HARDEST

I'd say

EASIEST <-> XT - FL - IC - HODIR - THORIM - MIMIRON - YOGG+1 - FREYA - YOGG+0 <-> HARDEST

But Hodir/Thorim are pretty even, so are Mimi and Yogg+1. I think Freya is by far the hardest now.