strategy

Healing Ulduar: Kologarn

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For other bosses in Ulduar, check the Ulduar Healing Strategy Page.

Kologarn is the sentinel that stands in the way between your raid group and the rest of Ulduear. He is a challenging boss for guilds that are new to raiding. Like Deconstructor, victory lies in the ultimate ability of individual players.

Abilities

Eyebeams: Two ways to handle this. Run out the door or run circles on the right side of the platform. More on this later.

Stone grip: He’s going to pluck three players into the palm of his hand and attempt to squeeze them to death until they get broken out. The only way to break players out is by DPSing the arm. Once it takes 380000 damage, the players are released.

Execution

DPS priority is going to approach the boss in this order: Right arm, Elementals, torso. When any arm is destroyed, the torso loses the same amount of health.

It’s best to call out right arm health at 5% intervals starting from 20 so your tanks know when to switch. After the right arm falls, elementals will spawn.

Two tanks are needed to hold Kologarn’s attention. He’s got a Gluth-like debuff that requires two tanks to taunt off each other. Otherwise, the debuff becomes flat-out unbearable.

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Dodging eye beams

When you get focused by twin green beams, you have around 2 seconds to start hustling before you get rocked. There are two ways to handle avoiding them:

Out the door

Make a beeline for the door and down the stairs. The upside is that it presents minimal risk to the players in your raid group. The down side is if the player is too slow, they might die due to line of sight issues. As healers, we don’t have to worry about this.

Laps on the right side

Have beam-focused players run circles along the right side of the room. The pros and cons are the exact inverse of the bailing-out-the-door method. Focused players are well within the range of healers. But poor kiting can lead to multiple casualties.

Whatever solution you choose, drill it in the heads of the rest of the raid to immediately get out of the green. The beams are extremely hard to miss. Keep your head up.

The Elemental Tank

It’s happened before. I’ve seen the off tank gain aggro of all ads and get focused by beams at the exact same time. As a tank, he’ll live for a few extra seconds but not anymore after that. Use whatever saves you can on him to help lessen the blow. Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit and Blessing of Sacrifice work admirably.

Healing strategy

Around 6-7, healers is a good number to start with. This can drop with more gear and experience. Expect an enormous amount of raid damage being doled out. His left arm sweeps the entire raid for around 15000+. Pick two of your strongest tank healers and assign them to the main tank (this will vary as they’re taunting off each other). Be sure to have Kologarn’s target up so you can see which tank he’s presently on.

If you have access to two Resto Shamans, they can anchor the Stone Grips quite easily.

Healer items

Ironmender OH (Priests, Druids)

Gloves of the Pythonic Guardian Gloves (Paladin)

Robes of the Umbral Brute Chest (Priests)

Unfaltering Armguards Wrists (Paladin)

Healing Ulduar: Freya

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For other bosses in Ulduar, check the Ulduar Healing Strategy Page

Freya offers everything a healing druid could ever want: pretty flowers, sparkly green trees, gnarled ents, angry seed bombs, and even friendly mushrooms of safety. This boss fight is a colorful, chaotic miscellany that asks healers to use all of their skills without overtaxing them in any one area. When you take on Freya, be prepared to react to whatever her tree-friends throw at you next. Keep reading for a healing-oriented rundown of her abilities.

The Pull

Conquest wiped this weekend in our 10 man because Yogi Ragadast, our bear tank, decided to eat a pickinick right in the middle of Freya’s patrol path. Beware that this guardian of the forest ranges far. Ideally, you want your tank to charge in and keep Freya occupied by the creek while the raid stands toward the center of the room awaiting adds. Note that attacking Freya before taking care of her trash waves does exactly nothing.

Phase 1:The Trash Roulette

In Phase 1, you cannot damage the boss and must instead deal with waves of adds. Freya will summon three separate trash events to keep raiders’ nasty paws out of her vegetable garden. Waves will spawn once per minute, and it’s possible to have more than one wave active at a time if your DPS is slow. They can appear in any order, and some will repeat during your encounter. I will explain in brief how to deal with each.

Type 1: Snaplashers, Ancient Water Spirits, and Storm Lashers
This wave is the most dangerous. Each mob type has a different amount of health, and all three must die at the same time or they will be rezzed. The Snaplashers have a stacking buff that makes them hit harder when they receive damage, so your dps will have to periodically switch away from them. In 25-man raids, two tanks may be used to deal with this phase. If that is the case, healers must keep an eye (or two) on the Snaplasher tank. In 10-man raids, one tank will take care of all these adds.

Type 2: Detonating Lasher
These little flowers may look sweet, but don’t be fooled. They’re rotten little skunkflowers at the core. These guys can attach themselves a healer very easily, and they’ll blow up when killed. If I attract too many four-petaled friends, I use Shadowmeld or Barkskin until they make like a tree and leaf. The Detonating Lashers are not particularly dangerous, though raid healers may have to clean up the mess that results if someone’s too close when one of these little suckers blows up.

Type 3: Ancient Conservator
This is essentially a tank and spank add. However, he spawns fun happy mushrooms that you absolutely must stand under in order to avoid his silence. Remember, mushrooms are a good thing.

Miscellaneous Phase 1 abilities:
During phase 1, Freya will also summon a glowing green tree, the Lifebinder. When it appears, the raid must kill it immediately in order to avoid its healing effect.

Healers must also be aware of the debuff Sunbeam. Freya will target a player and cast this ability, which does a weak AoE. It’s not disastrous in regular mode, but I expect that with hard mode it’s a different story.

Phase 2: Goddess on the Move

Phase 1 serves to wear down Freya’s HoTs and allow her to take damage. In Phase 2, your tank will need to kite her in a circle around the room. Why? You’ve heard of the druid spell Living Seed. Freya, the druid goddess, casts seeds of evil. These are small glowing seed pods that appear on the ground and then detonate after a few seconds. The raid will need to stay ahead of the chlorophyllic explosions. Aside from the Bad Seeds, the spawns of the Lifebinder tree, and the Sunbeam effect, Phase 2 is a tank and spank.

Healing Assignments

Much of the healing in this boss encounter is reactive, and it can either feel like catch-as-catch can chaos or like a perfectly orchestrated minuet. It all depends on the skill of your individual raid members at their jobs. A knowledge of movement and the basic raid mechanics like target-switching on demand will lead to a win. Everything might be messy, but it’s not difficult. Healing assignments can be fairly loose here, but we assign one specific healer to the main tank and one to each of two offtanks. Beyond that, healers work their magic on the move and cover players in their area. I’d say this is one of the least demanding fights healing-wise in Ulduar. Even though the adds phase can be hectic, it’s nothing like Thorim’s arena. I’d also say this boss is slightly more difficult on 10-man because there’s less redundancy in raid roles. In 25-man, you can still eke out a kill if, say, your players execute the different movements with something less than precision.
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Healing Heroic Emalon the Storm Watcher

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emalon_phixr If you didn’t know already, Emalon is the new boss in the Vault of Archavon in Wintergrasp. Unlike his cousin though, he’s got a bit of a kick to him and look out because he brought friends!

The encounter starts with Emalon in the middle of the room and four tempest minions surrounding him. Generally you’re set up is going to be one Main Tank and one to two Off Tanks. The offtank will grab all four of the Tempest Minions and drag them off to one side of the room, while the Main Tank grabs Emalon and take him towards the opposite side.

Emalon’s Abilities

First it should be noted he hits very hard on plate. Average hit pushes up around 20,000 damage.

Chain Lightning: Like the name inplies it’s a chain lightning, but the more people it chains to, the more damage it does. The raid will have to be spread out to avoid players eating a rolling chain.

Lightning Nova: This is similar in effect to Loken’s nova. He will occasionally spam a raid wide blast that deals increased damage the closer you are to him. Melee who are not fast to move out of it, and the MT will take a large hit (upwards of 20,000). If you are not in the immediate vicinity when it goes off you can expect to take roughly half the damage.

Overcharge: Occasionally Emalon will cast overcharge on one of the Tempest Minions. This will heal the minion to full health and increase that minions damage output by 20%. After 24 seconds the minion will explode causing massive raid wide damage.

Beserk: On heroic difficulty, Emalon has a 6 minute enrage. This will increase his damage output by 500%.

Healing Emalon

Emalon is a fun fight for healers. He hits hard and there is a lot of raid wide damage going on. The fight is set up though that group healing (Chain Heal, Circle of Healing, Wild Growth and glyphed Holy Light) becomes less effective as generally people are spread out to avoid Chain Lightning.

Main Tank Healing

Two healers should be assigned to the MT. I’ve found that a Disc Priest and a Resto Druid do wonders to even out the spikes in damage. Keeping HoTs on the tank as well as aggressively shielding help to smooth out the damage. The healers on the MT will have to keep a steady stream going as the tank will be eating novas at ground zero, large melee hits and potentially chain lightnings if the melee are not far enough away.

Off Tank Healing

The OT is similarly going to be taking a lot of damage. It is suggested to have two healers dedicated to the OT. Healers should keep a full range of HoT’s on the OT and be ready to drop large heals as adds gain Overcharge. The OT will be taking some of the nova splash as well as being beat on by four adds.

Raid Healing

For healing the raid you should have two to three healers assigned. Between Chain Lightning and Lightning Nova there will be a lot of raid damage being thrown around. The raid will be spread out though and so group healing should be replaced with a series of quick heals (Lesser Healing Wave, Flash Heal, Flash of light) as well as having HoTs up on as many targets as you can. Shamans I would suggest dropping Healing Stream Totem. It’s a 30 yard range so even with people spread out it will still hit most. Similarly Tranquility can be used to great effect because of it’s 30 yard range. Group heals can be used at certain points, such as when melee crowds around Tempest Minion to burn it down. They will be close enough together for a time to shoot off a couple quick Chain Heal, Wild Growth or Circle of Healing before they move back to Emalon.

It’s a fun fight. It forces healers to utilize different heals and keeps us casting pretty much throughout the entire encounter, so make sure you have your MP5/Regen gear on and potions at the ready.

Until next time, Happy Healing

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Healing Ulduar: XT-002 Deconstructor

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Welcome to Ulduar folks. If you made it past the lag, the vehicles, and the guard-dragon, and you didn’t get sidetracked by Ignis’ Hot Pockets, chances are you’ll soon find yourself standing in front of my favorite shiny robot in the game, the XT-002 Deconstructor. She just wants to give everyone a big hug . . . a spine-cracking hug, that is. She reminds me of eeeevil pet collector Elmyra from the Animaniacs. In all seriousness, Blizzard outdid themselves here. The boss’s animations and voice are oh-so-entertaining, and this fight provides a juicy-yet-manageable challenge for healers. Conquest downed XT on 4/21 using this strategy.

Essential Abilities

To effectively heal this boss, all healers need to make sure that their unit frames show the following three abilities. If you are a Grid or Pitbull user, add these to your custom debuffs.

Gravity Bomb
This ability places a debuff on a player. They need to move away from others to avoid causing AoE damage. This debuff does not tick immediately but rather does a significant chunk of damage at the delay of a few seconds. A player with Gravity Bomb will need a large heal once the ability triggers.

Light Bomb
This ability places a debuff on a player, and as with Gravity Bomb, the player must move away from others to avoid causing AoE Damage. This debuff is a strong, fast-ticking dot, and it lasts 9 seconds, dealing 3500 damage each tick. A player with Light Bomb needs immediate and steady attention.

Tympanic Tantrum
Of the three abilities, this one is the most dangerous. Tympanic Tantrum deals damage equal to 10% of each player’s maximum health every 1 sec for 12 sec. Nearby enemies are also dazed for the duration. Every player in the raid needs to receive a medium amount of healing in order to survive this ability. AoE and group heals (Divine Hymn, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, Wild Growth, Tranquility) are good solutions.

Healing Assignments

In order to meet the dps minimum for the boss, you will probably need either 6 or 7 healers. These assignments will assume 6. Consult the following diagram for the optimum positioning of your 6 healers.
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As always, the diagram is coded by class color. Our favorite arrangement uses a paladin and a tank healing-specced druid on the MT. On the raid, we have had good luck with using two priests, one shaman, and one raid-healing specced druid. In this diagram, you’ll notice that H3 and H4 are standing together, as are H5 and H6. The raid splits into two groups, and ranged dps stacks with raid healers. This grouping makes it easier for the person with Light Bomb or Gravity Bomb to run away. Your MT healers will have to cheat forward a bit of the pile of players in order to be in range of the tank. XT is big–approximately 10 yards across–and your tank will be on the far side.

Techniques

I’ve had the pleasure to both MT and raid heal for this fight, so I can share with you my top strategies for both positions. The key to this fight is using your abilities wisely.

MT healing
Two healers are necessary because this bot hits hard! Damage is spiky because the boss hits hard but swings slowly. We found a combination of a Resto Druid and a Holy Paladin to be very successful. The druid can keep some HoTs on the MT even through the Exposed Heart phase, in which there is no damage to the tank. We’ve lost the tank before when XT has come back with a vengeance, so be prepared with some HoTs or shields. Throughout the fight, the druid will probably be able to make a small contribution to raid healing. During Tympanic Tantrum, both MT healers will raid heal, and during the Heart phase, the paladin can probably dps, with the druid contributing as well if she is able to afford the mana hit.

Raid Healing
I learned the hard way that HoTs won’t cut it for Gravity Bomb and Light Bomb. For Gravity Bomb, have raid healers shield or pre-HoT and then time a big nuke heal to land as the bomb explodes. For Light Bomb, the player will need a series of quick heals (Flash of Light, Flash Heal, Lesser Healing Wave) or a combination of HoTs and direct heals. A Rejuv+Swiftmend is not enough. With my raid healing build, I was using HoTs + glyphed Healing Touch to good effect. Light Bomb is the more dangerous of the two bombs because it hits fast and hard.

For Tympanic Tantrum, HoTs and AoE heals are king. I was having great luck with Tranquility, Wild Growth, and Lifebloom during this phase. When you assign raid healers, make sure you distribute your AoE healers evenly on both sides.

Melee and Offtanks
There’s no way to get around doing double duty on this fight. At least one offtank will assist a couple of ranged dps with controlling the adds. Specific Raid Healers (perhaps H4 and H5) should be assigned to keeping the adds team alive.

Melee will need some attention, but Judgement of Light, if you have it, goes a long way towards keeping them healthy. We assigned our Resto Shaman to chain heal the melee group when she could.

DPS the heart!

All of the non-tree healers in your raid should switch to dps-ing the heart when it is exposed. Every little bit helps you meet the very high dps demand! I also recommend that any raid-healing druids switch forms and dps the heart. However, the MT healing druid should keep her HoTs on the tank, because XT returns suddenly and with a vengeance. If she can sneak a Moonfire in there too, by all means.

Mana Control

This fight has a few moments that will allow for OOFSR regen. It’s fairly tough on mana, and you will probably use a potion and your mana-restoration abilities (Innervate, Shadowfiend) if you are only carrying six healers. The fight is short with a 6 min enrage timer, but it’s fast and furious, so you can blow your mana if you’re not careful. If you find yourself running out, take a break instead of using your mana for offensive spells when the heart is exposed.

A Healer Check?

This boss tests healers in more ways than one. I like to think of it as a healing assignment check. Everyone has to do his or her specific job, and there’s no time for sniping. Moreover, you need a good balance of single-target and AoE heals to pull this off with 6 healers. There is both heavy Main Tank damage and extensive raid damage. Expect to use all of your skills.

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Healing Ulduar: Razorscale

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For other bosses in Ulduar, check the Ulduar Healing strategy page.

Conquest was able to clear out Razorscale on day 2 of Ulduar. It’s a fun encounter and places a lot of emphasis on ad control.

Quick notes

  • 3 phase encounter
  • Repeated waves of incoming trash

Pre-boss preparation

Suggested makeup

  • 3 tanks
  • 7 healers
  • 15 DPS

As raid leader, I like to split my raid into groups that have meaning in the raid frames. In other words, I set aside groups 1 and 2 to deal with trash ads coming in from the left side. Groups 4 and 5 would take care of the right. I made sure there was 1 tank and 3 healers in each ad control team. Try to split up interrupters as best as you can since you’ll want them to disrupt as many chain lightning casts as possible. It’s difficult to evenly split the DPS so use your discretion there accordingly.

Group 3 consists of your third tank and the 4 healers that were unable to fit into either teams.

Warrior tank Hunter Druid tank Hunter Paladin tank
Resto Shaman Rogue Disc Priest Rogue Resto Shaman
Mage Death Knight Resto Druid Death Knight Warlock
Mage Balance Druid Holy Paladin Ret Paladin Mage
Shadow Priest Resto Druid Holy Priest DPS Feral Druid Hunter

That’s a rough visual representation of how I split my groups. Dark blue team on the left, light blue team on the right. Gold team is responsible for big, bad whirlwind titan’s which I’ll elaborate on in a moment.

Process

Phase 1

On the ground, the things you have to worry about are the incoming mobs that spawn from the different drill-shaped ground pods. Meanwhile, Dwarven expedition teams will be repairing the four harpoons.

Razor’s attacks

Fireball: Fire damage to players

Flame buffet: Increases fire damage taken by players. I believe this ability stacks. It’s duration is ~1 minute.

Devouring Flame: Spits a Lava Bomb at a player inflicting fire damage and leaving a fiery patch on the ground dealing fire damage to everyone within 6 yards.

She enrages after 10 minutes.

Add attacks

Dark Rune Guardian: Puts a magical debuff on your raid. Dispellable. Will go after your friendly expedition dwarves.

Dark Rune Sentinel: Whirlwind. These guys typically spawn in the middle.

Dark Rune Watcher: Interrupt their Chain Lightning when possible. Their Chains can hit up to 5 targets.

razor-process

Adds will show up from the left and right. Dark blue and light blue teams will have to take care of them via DPS and CCs if necessary.

Now gold team gets to have some fun here. That Devouring Flame ability I mentioned above? Here’s a hint I found out from the Plusheal forums. Devouring Flame can be predicted and controlled. Razor shoots Devouring Flames at the player closest to it. So all gold team has to do is stay under the boss as much as possible and soak up incoming flames. The Disc Priest in that group (me) just heals him. At the same time, gold team needs to pick up Dark Rune Sentinels that show up in the middle.

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Gold team in action

The tanking Druid played first person and looked up. I stayed within range in support. When I see a Sentinel spawn, I’ll cue him and let him know there’s a sentinel and he’ll pick it up right away. Once gold team establishes aggro, he calls for ranged DPS to focus and nuke. Once the sentinel is down, it’s back to add control.

There are four harpoons. When they’re all repaired and fired, Razorscale is brought down to the ground. Get three harpoons fired and hold on to the fourth one. You fire them by having a player from either blue team right click on the turrets. Your raid leader should call when to fire the fourth one. When most of the ads are dead, cue the fourth turret call.

When a Harpoon is fixed, it will flash on your screen. I personally like to say things like “harpoon 1 fired, harpoon 2 fired, harpoon 3 fired, harpoon 4 standing by” so that the entire raid knows where we’re at.

turrets

Phase 2

When the raid leader calls for harpoon 4 to be hit, all DPS should be switching off ads. Anything extra should be CC’d in the process. Razor will fall to the ground and remain stunned for seconds. Full DPS on Razor at this point. Stay away from the front of this boss. After time is up, Razor will do a wing buffet knocking everyone back and light a conical flame breath. She’s facing the entrance into this area while she’s stunned.

After the stun wears off, the turrets will explode and have to be repaired again. Razor flies back into the air and triggers phase 1 again.

This would be the phase to hit Heroism or Bloodlust to push Razor into phase 3. If Razor’s health isn’t low enough then you have to do phase 1 all over again.

Phase 3

Have your main tank of choice pick up Razor and immediately face her away from the raid. A good position would have Razor face the entrance just past the turrets. She’s going to continue to do AoE knockbacks (Wind Buffet), Devouring Flame, and Flame Buffets. The Flame Buffet debuffs will continue to stack. If it reaches a certain point, it’s going to insta-kill your tank.

Fused Armor is another debuff your tank will take. When it reaches 5 stacks, your tank is not going to be able to move, use skills or taunt. You’ll have to change tanks before it reaches 5 to buy enough time for your raid to finish her off.

Your raid positions themselves and spreads out behind the boss during this part.

Healing strategy

For both blue teams, you’ll want 2 raid healers and 1 tank healer on each side. You’ll also want 1 tank healer in the gold team. Stay as far back as possible to avoid any chain lightnings that manage to get through. Use strong AoE heals to mitigate them as well. During phase 2 when DPS switches over, the tank healers need to remain on the tank if they’re on any ads. Any idle healers are encouraged to jump up into the play and DPS the boss during phase 2.

Healer drops

Belt of the Fallen Wyrm – Mail

Bracers of the Broodmother – Leather

Guiding Star – Mace

Razorscale Shoulderguards – Plate

Shackles of the Odalisque – Wrists