Hard mode shenanigans

Last night my 10 man group attempted a few hard mode encounters in Ulduar. Some were met with success, others...well, less so.

Flame Leviathan

This was the 2nd week we did FL with a tower up (I missed the first one), so it's no surprise that we rolled over him with nary a loss. What does shock me though is that our 25 man fails with great fanfare doing the exact same thing.

We left the blue tower up (Thorim?), and I had my first shot at driving a Siege Engine on this encounter. Normally I'm part of the assault team that flies through the air, but I wanted to see just how difficult it actually was to kite and stay out of the blue beam.

I failed. Epicly. With fanfare, and much applause. I failed to get agro (I think) and he went after a demolisher. I thought that the mechanics were such that he went after the closest Siege (I was) and we'd take it from there. Oops.

I also got frozen, but in my defense it was my first time. Once I figured out what was up, no more issues. Save enough energy to Steam Rush when it gets close, and you're home free. It was pretty straight forward.

Razerscale

No hard mode, but we did get the achievement and had no shaman for heroism. Let's hear it for Holy Paladin and Disc priest DPS (the tree just shook his leaves).

XT

Oh. My. God. Are you serious? I wish I had recorded vent for this. We made the call to push him to hard mode on a whim. It took some push of Holy DPS (I'm sure it was my last HS/HoW that got it), but we kicked him over. Then the world exploded.

Void zones? WTF is that? Life Spark? Quick, shove it into Megatron's chest! It was Benny Hill redux Ulduar. I was laughing as we wiped.

Kologarm

Got this achievement (both arms) by complete accident. It was pretty funny though. The right arm was going down fairly quickly due to splash damage and DoTs (I may have consecrated), and we were caught by surprise.

Cat Lady

AHAHAHAHAHA - that's all I can say for this. At like 10% someone (not me, nooooo) called all DPS off so we could kill all the defenders. We had plenty of time, and who knew? So everyone stopped DPS (even the tank) and we just stood there. 5 seconds later the raid was 80% dead. I can't even tell you what happened. She cast something we hadn't seen (I think it was the shock you have to interrupt) and BAM! It's the disc priest and the tank left standing. She had <2k when the tank died.

My sides hurt 20 minutes later we were laughing so hard.

Iron Council

Through generous use of battle rezes (3 druids - one of each flavor) we got him right as the 2nd tank died to ,the buff. Once again, no Heroism. We did it by having the feral tank take the first buff, run to the corner to die, and then get a BR from the brocolli/chicken. The DK taunted, and off we went.

We did discover two neat tricks though. First, he doesn't stay on the person with the buff. So the Pally could Bubble/Taunt to get the buff, and then have the DK taunt it back to tank it. Same with the feral druid. Have him long enough to get the buff, DK taunts off, bear goes cat for incresed DPS.

Conclusion

I think these really showed that a lot of the exclusive buffs aren't needed for the encounters. We didn't have Heroism, any Int buffs, no lock or warrior...In fact our team was a complete hodgepodge. Hunter (Survival), 2xSpriest, Disc/Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Doomchicken of Love, Tree, DK, Rogue, and a Feral Druid. Definately not the best mix for buffs - but we work well together and that's important.

I also got it reinforced that wiping can be good times too. Especially when you turn around and knock the boss silly on the next attempt/regular mode.