Project Lore

It's only been about two months since Ulduar's arrival, but with many top-flight guilds on the warpath to world firsts (several of which have already been achieved), I don't think it's too soon to start looking back on the dungeon and compare our pre-release expectations with the final product. From a game design perspective, it's always a good idea to take snapshots of encounters over time to figure out what worked and what didn't or what sound cool at first, but now serves only as an annoyance.

I plan to break this down into a series of articles focused on each "region" of the instance, starting with The Siege area, which encompasses everything up through XT-002 Deconstructor.

Flame Leviathan - Watching videos of PTR Flame Leviathan fights on the internet sent shivers down my spine. It actually looked really cool, but it was giving me nightmares of Malygos' third phase, which our guild had a lot of trouble with. Vehicles, you could say, were not our specialty. Pondering it further, I realized that the problem with Malygos could be pinned on two key things: three-dimensional movement with no environmental reference points and the lack of visual feedback based on the damage that your drake was dealing. The encounter is hectic enough without having to figure out which DoT under the boss' nameplate is yours.

Thankfully, Flame Leviathan addressed both of these issues. By giving players only ground vehicles toplay with, as well as a clear amount of space to run around in, the problem of keeping your group together was non-existent. On top of that, the fight is just fundamentally different. There is no healing to worry about beyond the people you send up to destroy the turrets, and the "chase" mechanic eliminates any desire to stay grouped up anyway. In my guild, the only trouble we ever really encountered was confusion when picking up the people who had been launched off the back after destroying Leviathan's turrets.

In the end, it seems that Flame Leviathan was a quick, easy, and rewarding victory for most people out there. I've always thought of the encounter (and the tower-thrashing leading up to it) as Ulduar's version of Karazhan's Chess event: it's fun, and incorporates some really cool mechanics, but can be facerolled with minimal effort. However, through up a couple of towers, and you've got a real fight on your hands. Leviathan may be great for farming a few quick epics/badges, but it's good to know that the challenge of his Hard Mode scales so well.

Razorscale - Razorscale's fight seemed terribly chaotic at first. With adds spawning all over the place and fireballs raining down upon our heads, our tanks had quite a problem keeping up. Damage seemed to be coming from anywhere and everywhere, with aggro being stolen by the DPS, and Dark Rune Sentinels ripping holes in our raid using their Whirlwind ability. Not to mention all the people having picnics in the fire.

However, it didn't take us too long to figure out how to keep things under control. The Sentinels needed to be picked up by a single tank and taken somewhere far away from the core of the raid where ranged dps could pelt them with their spells and arrows. It also helped to learn where they would spawn - we realized that every time a drill popped up on the Eastern edge of the brown circle, we were going to have to deal with one.

As confidence improved, we realized that the damage the other adds did was rather inconsequential and that they simply needed to be brought together and demolished with AoE spells, a la the trash waves in Mount Hyjal. If some of them still happened to be up while Razorscale was down, the tanks would bring them in front to be obliterated by the eventual Flame Breath.

Once the dragon's on the ground for good, it's a real tank and spank. This is one of those encounters whose difficulty totally plummets once you know how to deal with the adds. No doubt that the nerfs, which eliminated some of the randomness associated with drill spawns, helped, but I can't remember a time after the first couple of weeks that we haven't gone in and one-shotted Razorscale.

XT-002 - Like Razorscale, XT-002 was an absolute nightmare at first. Fights incorporating lots of adds tend to be that way, as not only do you have to learn the boss' patterns and abilities, but those of their helpers, as well. We honestly thought for awhile that we simply lacked the DPS to do it.

Another surprise we encountered was the absolute wackiness of the fight! Unlike the cold, unfeeling techno-babble of Void Reaver (aka "The Wobot"), XT features a whiny, high-pitched voice and treats your raid like its own personal toybox. It's not exactly the way this mechanical monstrosity was portrayed in the previews for Ulduar. though it is explained that the Deconstructor's childish attitude results from considering its creator, Mimiron, to be something of a "father figure."

Laughs quickly turned to frustration though as we continually wiped on Ulduar's true gatekeeper (both Razorscale and Ignis are optional), once again mostly due to the gobs of adds that the boss summons at every quarter of his health. The scrapbots (which heal XT when they reach him) come in gigantic waves, which the ranged dps struggled to keep in check by themselves. The explosive bomb bots often slipped through our defenses, as well. Oddly enough, I don't think that we ever had any serious trouble with the Pummelers.

We came to the quick realization, though, that the melee who normally stayed on the boss (and damaged the heart between phases) would need to help with the adds whenever it was necessary. This strategy became even more important on 10-man as we would often DPS the heart down so fast that we'd end up with two waves of adds at the same time.

Looking back, I'd have to say that XT-002 is one of my favorite fights in Ulduar. We can blow through it with no problems (especially using a new technique -- sure to be nerfed -- which involves tanking the boss near the left wall, so that it will not spawn adds from that area), but it's a lot of fun. There's just something so satisfying about watching Deconstructor's health plummet as we demolish the heart. And really, who can't love a robot that does calisthenics before the fight?

Ignis - I list this fight last, because it was the last of the initial four that our guild actually completed. In fact, we went deeper in and took down both Iron Council and Kologarn before finally downing Ignis. Part of the problem is the trash you have to clear before getting to him. There's quite a bit of it, and all of them feature super-annoying abilities from the Magma Ragers' flaming tornadoes to the Molten Colossus' Unquenchable Flames, a debuff that served no other purpose than to annoy (flames would continually jump from one raid member to another, damaging them -- but not fatally -- until you could access one of the water pools near Ignis). Thankfully, the latter has been hotfixed out.

Clearing the trash is not nearly as bad as it used to be, but considering that Ignis is an optional encounter, it was policy early on to simply skip it and come back later if we had the time.

The boss, himself, is not push-over, either. As a melee damage-dealer, I'm admittedly not as familiar with the complexities of the fight as I should be. After all, the only thing I have to do is run around behind him and attack, while staying out of the gigantic flame pits Ignis occasionally leaves on the ground. As Iunderstand it, tanks have quite a bit of maneuvering to do, especially those covering the Constructs, which need to be pulled into said flame pits until they are molten and then into the water to make them brittle and susceptible to ranged DPS.

And healers, well, they just get the short end of the stick in this fight. There's a crazy amount of raid damage being thrown around at all times, and on top of that, there are periods in which they can't actually cast anything.

While we have succesfully taken "The Furnace Master" down several times, the beating he dishes out is still sometimes too much for us to handle. Out of all of the bosses in The Siege area of Ulduar, this is the only one I can confidently say that we do not have "on farm" yet.

When all is said and done, The Siege serves as a good introduction to the sorts of things you'll encounter later in the dungeon, such as add-intensive fights (Freya and Thorim), technical movement fights (Hodir and Mimiron), and even facerolls (Kologarn).

Most of the rest of the dungeon poses a greater challenge, but all of these encounters (with the possible exception of Ignis) are easy enough to allow just about any guild (or PuG) to come in, whoop some ass, and earn a little bit of gear in the first place.

Next up, I'll be covering The Antechamber, which encompasses Iron Council, Kologarn, and Auriaya.

Dear readers, did you find these fights to your expectations, as well? Too easy? Too hard? Were the nerfs hotfixed in post-release worth it? Anything you were totally surprised by? Please let us know what you think in the comment section below.