Union of the Three Towers

It is no secret that summer is a bane for raiding guilds, for most of a guild's roster will not be available for majority of the raids and they rather go on holidays, camping, out and just generally spend their time with family and friends. However, this is no reason to stop a guild's progress. you can get away with a lot, even under difficult circumstances.

We almost did not get a raid together last night, but what first started as a walk in the park, just killing time, taking down easy bosses like Malygos, actually turned into a progression. Naturally, I was happy as a cucumber because I finally got my Malygos kill. From there, we were just suppose to take down Flame Leviathan on easy mode and call it the night.

Thanks to Maaki, our resident imbalanced mage, the suggestion circulated that we should go wild and try it with three towers. I had never done it with more than one and the guild had never done it with more than two. But heck, browse some wowwiki.com and after a 15 minutes of talking tactics, we were ready.

What we did was settle on simplified tactics. We only had one choppa for the encounter and my demolisher was the only one dedicated to throwing dps on the boss. Usually tactics say you need two on the boss, but we only needed one at a time. The first dps loaded into my catapult just before the fight started and my first button was #6.

We would then rotate the two in my demolisher; open up with pyros before first overload, reload before it came and again open up with everything once the overload came. As the choppa picked the dps up, my second passanger got on the catapult and the moment overload ended, he was already on the boss.

For the towers, we chose to leave out Life, for it has to be the hardest one, mitigating damage that the boss take and constantly summoning adds that you have to deal with. So keeping storm, flame, and frost we had to constantly dodge the various light pillars and constantly moving fire aoe but it was all surprisingly easy. The trick is to a) always empty you pyros on the boss when an overload comes b) do not take unnecessary damage from the elements, and c) do not let the boss hit you.

When driving a demolisher, always try to move to a vicinity of the falling pyros that both demolisher should be constantly shooting down. Your passanger should give you a boost for a quick getaway, if and when the Flame Leviathan chooses to come after you.

In the end, you will get a glowing achievement bar for your trouble and believe me, it feels really good ;-)

Guilds and Specs

A week's worth of raiding in my new guild is behind me and it is time to look back for a bit. Those of you who regularly read this blog had, without a doubt noticed the guild change. Suffice to say, I was not as happy in my previous guild, as I would have preferred. Differences in views, between me and many other, especially senior members drove me to decide to leave.

Instead, I now find myself in a finnish guild, as per my own national and so far the experience has been superb. I have always had a theory about one-national guilds, that they have to, by their nature do and manage better than a multi-national guild; simply because they have a smaller pool of people to recruit from, thus, have to by average for better.

The summer of course means that there are fewer of us online and available for raids, which makes it ideal for me, giving me a lot of raid time, with the past week having easily passed by exploring Ulduar for the first time. Aye, was the first time I ever went beyond Flame Leviathan, shocking to some people I know but the simply reason was, I had rather spent my time first gearing and clearing raids like OS and Naxxramas. For my take on Ulduar, have a read at my earlier post, Ulduar Breakdown.

The biggest change, since my guild shift, was the redesign of my dps spec. I had been testing an unholy dual-wield spec for my death knight and it did not quite seem up to par in my new guild. Of course, being a raiding guild, opinions were quite frank and straight forward, so to lay the issue at rest, I have thus put my experiment on hold.

I now play a 53/18 blood spec. It uses a two-hander weapon, fresh from Ulduar, Relentless Edge and is all about producing very high damage through Obliterate and Heart Strike, in that order. Dancing Rune Weapon and Hysteria providing valuable cooldowns, and with Blood Tap and Empower Rune Weapon, provide as many hits with obliterate as possible.

I also found another build, a 51/2/18 blood spec. Naturally, a two-hander build but because it lacks Annihilation, it uses Death Strike in its rotation. This produces less damage per hit than obliterate but compensates with extra output from diseases and auto attacks. I had no chance to test test this one but having looked at it, and the fact that it is one of main specs that Ensidia death knights use, I have no doubt it is a very good option in the right hands.

Just remember to arm yourself with the proper glyphs, respectively.

Glyph of Dark Death

Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon

Glyph of Obliterate

Glyph of Death Strike

Ulduar Breakdown

Ulduar is, in every way, a step up from Naxxramas. Of course, your gear has to be much better than what you could venture into Naxxramas. It is designed for full naxx10 gear, but having bits from the 25-man instance helps a lot. The fights are now much more complex, and in my opinion, more unforgiving. I remember people complaining about the nuances of defeating the Four Horsemen or Kel'Thuzad, but I think it is safe to say, Ulduar takes it all much further.

Looking at the first four bosses, they are by far the simplest on the complexity scale, on par with the toughest in Naxxramas, but if you are geared and know the tactics, they should not constitute a huge problem. In fact, the same way that arachnid- and plague quarters in Naxxramas, the first four of Ulduar can easily become the farm bosses for most guilds that venture in.

From there, the fights quickly begin to get tougher. From the antechamber, both Kologarn and Hodir were quite fun for me. True, the new guys (me being one of them) struggled a bit on Hodir but after a couple of takes, dodging the flash freeze and falling rock became quite fun. The one annoying boss, was Auriaya and her two cats. I am by nature a tank, even if I spend most of my time as DPS, and as such I like fights that I can control. If there is chaos on the battlefield, it puts me off and the two cats are an epitome of chaos. The quicker you take them down, the better you will be off.

When you get to the keepers, you are truly inside Ulduar. Tougher than anything you have seen in WotLK, by far (not counting Sartharion with three drakes). We took down Thorim fairly easily, thanks to the fact that we had some experienced people on board but both Mimiron and especially Freya, were a bane. Both bosses share the fact that there are a lot of things to keep track of on the screen and it takes quite a lot out of you, whether it is avoiding mines, dodging shotgun shots, looking for the healing tree, or coordinating to kill lashers. And in middle of all that, you should also do some decent dps.

It is difficult to explain how hard we tried to take Freya down. We did it eventually, with a near flawless performance in the end but I have to say, it was an undertaking. People say that many of the fights in Ulduar are strictly a gear check, like XT-002. While that might be true, Freya on the other hand, is a check on team work. Everyone has to pitch in; to kill the trees, aoe the plants, kill the three children at the same time, and free rooted compared. After my experience, I am a firm believer that until your group can really work as a team, you will fail on Freya.

From there, the next two bosses are naturally only General Vezax and the old god himself, Yogg-Saron. I could not make the last raid so I was only there for two attempts on Vezax but the fights do continue quite complicated. For me, as a death knight, Vezax is very easy because I am unaffected by his most frustrating ability; Aura of Despair which prevents almost all mana regeneration. Healers especially however are at the receiving end of that fight though, without a doubt always running out of mana and having to dodge in and out of green puddles.

Yogg-Saron will be an interesting fight and I cannot wait to get a chance to face him on next lockdown. Research has promised an interesting battle of wills; as another fight with multiple phases and many small nuances. As a whole, I have come to enjoy Ulduar very much. The fights are interesting and very colorful. There are a myriad of challenges and there is much to look forward to, and not not in only killing Yogg-Saron but gearing up for the hard modes and beginning a spree for a bucket load of achievements.