Raiders Rejoice, Ulduar Is Hard!
Yes, I know it’s popular for everyone to want to get easy loot off of easy bosses, but not everyone feels that way. I personally love a challenge, and I know I am far from alone.
It is for this reason that Naxx was somewhat disappointing to me, I know it was their plan to make the first tier of raiding accessible, but after farming for months on end, I feel it got somewhat mind-numbing.
It is for that reason I was fairly nervous going into Ulduar the first time yesterday. While I knew it would be harder, I was concerned that it too would quickly become another boring farm grind. I was really hoping they would give a challenge.
Man, did I get my wish! Ladies and gentleman, I am happy to report the bosses in Ulduar are SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult that those in tier 7, and even harder than I had ever expected. Now I’m sure there are those among you that will disagree, no doubt some of you crazies out there went in and demolished the place, I even saw that Ensidia has downed Yogg-Saron. But for me, I’m pretty confident this content will keep me busy for a while.
My guild was able to make quick work of Flame Leviathan (one shot, dare I say he was easy? :p), but man did things take a turn after that. Ingis was incredibly challenging, and after a few hours of diligently wiping we moved on the both of the other bosses that are available after Leviathan goes down. While both Razorscale and XT-002 seemed much more manageable, we were unable to down either of them. I’m feeling pretty good that at least one of these guys will be going down tonight, but I am just thrilled at the new mindset this has put me in.
No longer do I expect to clear half the instance in a day, I don’t even know if we can clear half the instance in a month! Ulduar is a challenge, and we haven’t even hit the hard modes yet. I couldn’t be more excited for the level of difficulty lying ahead of us.
How are you guys doing in there? More importantly, how do you find the difficulty? Are you guys knocking down bosses because it is too easy, or are you hitting your head against a wall because it is too hard? I’d love to hear your experiences.
Reader Comments (35)
Actually, Im having problems downloading 3.1. Blizzard emps on the forums have told me to re-install the entire game.. so thats what I'v been doing latley. However, looking at my guildies achievements on the armory, all they've got is Flame on 25 man.
wowinsider says that Vodka gets North American first Yogg-Saron kill
http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/16/vodka-gets-north-american-first-yogg-saron-kill/
We downed leviathan easily...
then wiped continuously on the other three bosses rofl... ignis was INCREDIBLY hard and difficult... so we then tried constructor and razorscale.. after numerous wipes, we finally down them.. so we've done razorscale, constructor, and leviathan..
we then decided to skip ignis for now (can teleport to the antechamber of ulduar), and tried kologarn, omg he is so much fun and awesome, but wiped...
it definitely is a challenge!
Our guild took down Flame Leviathan in about 3, maybe 4, shots. I honestly don't remember, we were all pretty hyped. The Gauntlet, our guild felt, was a MAJOR win for Blizzard; we all found it immensely enjoyable.
Ignis was, by far, the hardest of the ones we encountered, particularly because of the flame revenant adds before him. Superheated Flames FTL. The adds being past, we got him to about 75% before we moved on to Razorscale.
Razorscale took a few attempts, but we were able to bring the drake down. Also a very fun fight. Little bit of trouble on the adds at first, but we figured out our own little strategy for them.
XT-002 freaked a couple of us out with the voice, and while we weren't succesful in bringing him down, we all feel we got a good feeling for the fight; and, when next we venture in there, we should be able to take him down.
So far, the instance has been a really fun play.
Dark Brigade managed to down FL 25m after roughly 6-8 wipes (due to failed starts, D/C's, ect) but in the end we managed to get the first shard of the Legendary mace for our GL.
I have to say, I'm loving the new content. Naxx is boring to the point that I'm 50/50 if I want to run it most times.
definitely glad to hear that Ulduar is turning out to be quite the challenge. Our guild is looking to jump in tomorrow and see what how well we did our homework.
I'm rejoicing right there along with ya, man.
Our guild stepped into Ulduar for the first time on the 15th (we raid 8-12p Mon, Tues, Wed, but took Tues off because of patch issues). FL went down successfully after 1 or 2 attempts.
We then went on to repeatedly wipe on Razorscale until 11:45, at which point we got a lot of mail and plate gear I didn't care about. ;-)
We'll probably hit Ignis Monday; I'm hoping that my experience on the PTR will help us out a little, if only with the Ragers.
Oh yeah, and I can't wait! Looting my first Emblem of Conquest was probably the most satisfaction I've felt from an achievement lately. Win.
2 shot Flame leviathan and took us 4 tries for XT-002 and thats all we have done so far
My guild was able to take down Flame Leviathan (really fun fight btw) and we got XT down to 1% after a full night of wipes. We're learning but none of the real strats are out yet.
I imagine guilds that just want to get past this stuff will eventually get proper strats from guilds that did that hard work. Lets give it two weeks and see if a majority of guilds that were able to fly by naxx still have problems.
Hard-more on the other hand, that's going to be a combination of skill and gear. Right now it seems damn near impossible to clear that stuff weekly.
I don't expect to ever see this content for myself. I'm a casual player and have raided Kara only once and AQ40 only once. I hope that maybe when I get to 80 and do a couple heroics, I'll be able to join a Naxx pug and hit a few bosses. Does anyone think I'll be easy to do once everyone is in Uldaur gear?
I'm not geared enough for Ulduar yet, but I know that sooner or later I will get myself in there. I still need at least a few upgraded pieces before heading into 10 man, but I think the bare minimum requirements are definitely a forseeable future for me. Excited to hear about what's going on with other guilds in there, and glad to hear that this will be a challenge for (hopefully) quite awhile.
we did a try out run just to see what the inside was like and get a feeling of the gauntlet and Flame Leviathan. We even desided to go unbuffed so we wouldn't waste any buff-food and flasks/elixirs. Took us 2 tries tho to get to first boss, figuring out what worked best. Then the boss himself was so much fun. Our warlocks got trown to his back to nuke his turrets as they both did the most damage anyway (remember, still unbuffed). Took us 5 tries to get him down but we had the time of our life. Next time we do him it's going to be too easy because we'll be buffed then
Tip for Razorscale... MT and OT don't go to adds, let them come to you. So staying closer to the launchers or whatever you call them, is much easier on the heals and dps. We wiped, having problems with unlucky flame drops on healers 2x back to back, but we managed to do it, sticking with not chasing after the adds :)
Good luck!
-Svenofnine
US Boulderfist
We downed Leviathan on our 2nd try, the first wipe because we started the encounter too earlier so that one of our demolishers were outside the "arena" so to speak.
With the 2nd attempt though we killed him without ever sending it into a shutdown or something, so we ended up getting the achievement for it xD
But yeah, we proceeded to wipe continuously on Ignis and Razorscale, getting the damn drake down to 50% before our last raider died lol.
i've been in once with a PUG lol wiped 3 times getting to levlithan XD then everythnig went to hell and ulduar along with everythnig else went down and we couldn't do it but i got to him and all i can say is the seige battle is EPIC :D
unfortunatly my guild are kinda new to the raiding scene we not even done 2 quarters of naxx (stuck on hegian damn him XD) so don't think i'll be acomplishing ulduar soon
my guild is currently trying to do the fights without reading strats so its kinda fun trying to figure out how to do things on your own.
so far we have :FT on 25m
and: xt002 razerscale and ft on 10m ignis is still giving us problems
tbh, Vodka are only #2 in the world because Ensidia consist of guilds that would be #1 and #2.
Meh, America got the patch a day early, plus Magtheridon was the last EU realm to come online and suffered the most restarts, yet Ensidia still got world first on Yogg.
TBH, I don't think they're real players, I think Kungen is a bloody good engineer and just multi-boxes and macros like a mad bitch on crack.
Me personaly i dont care, i will my guild will eventualy down the content. weather people think it is hard or not hard. i am just so tired of the people that played the first wow bitching about how easy it has gotten. mabe this will shut them up for awhile or mabe they just bitch to hear themselves bitch. only time will tell.
we've downed FL, razorscale, and XT-002 and our gm got pissed at the trash around ingis so we quit lolol. since when is the trash harder then the bosses? lol
I did Ignis 10-man on the PTR (I'm really hoping 25-man is darn similar, so I'll have a clue about what's going on for once).
We wiped a billion times on the Magma Ragers, but finally worked out a strat that works. We tanked them against the all and had the raiders spread out around them. That way, if someone's being chased by a cyclone, they can run straight backwards away from the rest of the raid.
Worked like a charm. Cleared the rest of the Ragers no problem.
Anyone know if you can still walk between the colossi (is that plural? lol) without aggroing them? I wasn't sure if that was intentional or a bug on the PTR. I sure hope it's intentional; those guys are a PIA.
Me and my guildies have the same prob u had we down Leviathan after 1 wipe though, however we didnt down Razorscale, Ignis or XT-200 cos of loads of wipes but i can say that 3 1/4 of us know the tactics and should get them down over the coming months. So Ulduar is a massive challenge compared to Naxx.
I havn't been able to try ulduar out yet cause my Pc crashed the day it got released, really frustrating.
Props to Blizz for making Ulduar a very fun and exciting raid experience. The gauntlet, start to finish, is extremely fun and all three vehicles are as much fun to pilot as they are to be a passenger. Flame Levi was killed on our first attempt, due to knowledge from PTR as well as mmo-champ's "boss abilities" page.
After our hopes were high and morale was strong, we proceeded to get rickrolled by Razor and overwhelmed by Ignis' fiery temper.
All in all our guild progressed, getting each boss down to a considerably lower health pool with each attempt, however time just ran up and many had to log off for the night.
Can't wait to go back in for round 2, and a chance at Decon and possibly Kologarn.
BTW, Ignis trash should be an achievement to some, lol.
So our guild went in Ulduar on day one, been going solid every day since Live.
Right now we are doing 10's to get an idea of how the fights and the mechanics work but so far we have downed the following bosses.
Flame Leviation
XT-002
Razorscale
Thorim
Auriaya
Kologarn
Iron Council
Tomorrow will most likely be Freya, Ignis, Hodir and Mimiron.
Having a hard time of figuring out the adds on Ignis and how to kite them into the Flame pillars.
I kinda like the idea of how the trash follows the concepts of TK, but i am even more impressed with how much harder it is and that trash actually consists of a legit strat and not just tank running in and letting loose on AOE to try stupidly to get to the top of the DPS Charts as fast as possible. I threw my email in there for if anyone has any questions on the bosses we've downed and i'm more than happy to answer any and all strat questions!
Good luck to everyone and happy adventuring.
My email is Teapsters@hotmail.com BTW