Razorscale 25 Boss Strategy
Summary/Intro
Razorscale is usually the second boss we kill in Ulduar, simply because he is one of the easiest. You can encounter him after killing Flame Leviathan. This boss fight has two stages; an air and adds phase where you do not actually fight Razorscale, and a grounded phase, where you deal with Razorscale herself. She is also one of the four bosses you must kill to receive the Heroic: The Siege of Ulduar achievement.
Recommended Raid Composition
The strategy I recommend for Razorscale usually favors a ranged heavy group, and you’ll see why in just a little bit. As always, please make sure you make good use of the variety of buffs available and keep class synergy in the back of your mind when filling your raids.
For this fight, however, I recommend 5-7 healers, and 2-3 tanks, and a decent amount of AoE’ers, giving preference to those that can AoE from range. To be safe, we usually do Razorscale with 6 healers and 3 tanks.
Razorscale and Adds Abilities
Razorscale (while in the air):
- Fireball – Razorscale will shoot these down while she is in the air, dealing around 12k damage to a single player.
- Devouring Flame – This is the blue flame that everyone needs to avoid — it does around 9k damage per second to players standing in it.
The Iron Dwarves:
- Whirlwind – The Dark Rune Sentinels (the big adds) has a standard whirlwind ability that deals very painful damage to non-tanks. These big guys should be focus-fired down.
- Chain Lightning – The Dark Rune Watchers occasionally chain lightening, so generally speaking, you want to kill these from range, since the chain lightning jumps from player to player, dealing more damage as it jumps.
Razorscale (while grounded/permanantly grounded):
- Flame Breath – A standard move for most dragons, this attack does around 20k damage and should only be taken by the MT. No one should ever stand in front of Razorscale.
- Wing Buffet – Happens right after Flame Breath, and has a casting time. This knocks players back by 35 yards, but can be completely avoided by simply being far away enough.
- Flame Buffet – Only happens when she is permanently grounded, this increases fire damage taken by all players by 1500.
- Fuse Armor – A bad debuff that the tank gets occasionally, you will want your OT to taunt off at around 2 stacks of this debuff.
The Razorscale Fight Strategy
Phase 1 -
Phase 1 is the adds phase. Razorscale herself is flying around in the sky, and you simply need to protect the engineer guys who are repairing the 4 turrets which will eventually help you ground the boss. You will want to assign 1 guy to click the turrets; we assign a hunter to do it since they can attack fine from range, and can also MD stray targets to a tank.
The biggest mechanic of phase 1 where most people die is the Devouring Flames. The blue flames deal so much damage (9k/second), that, coupled with getting hit by a chain lightning or a Fireball, most people cannot live for more than 2 seconds in the fire. This is where the raid placement helps out substantially, and what most strat websites don’t seem to point out.
On the screenshot to the left, you see me, a lonely moonkin hanging out in Razorscale’s room. The ENTIRE RAID stacks up on that square, minus the tanks and 1-2 competent healers. Here’s why: Razorscale’s devouring flame will not leave that circle, provided that your tanks (or someone, for that matter), is inside the circle. Some other guilds have a “flame kiter”, but I prefer this strat since the only people “kiting” the flame are our tanks, anyways.
Using this strat, you will find that the only people taking damage during Phase 1 (other than the occasional Fireball, which can be healed through easily) are the tanks. Assign a tank to each of the 3 general areas where the adds can spawn, and pew pew till you get your 4th turret and can ground Razorscale. Pop all cooldowns, and rinse and repeat till you get the boss down to 50%, where Phase 2 begins. If you get Razor to stay grounded before she flies back up in the air, you should get the Heroic: A Quick Shave achivement.
We usually just AoE down the adds from range, and tell our melee to simply stay stacked on range and not even go inside the circle. Our hybrid melee classes (ie – ret pallies and enhance shamans) are usually offhealing so they aren’t bored during this phase. However, if you like to follow a kill order, you want to kill them as follows: Sentinels > Watchers > Guardians.
Phase 2
Phase 2 has never been a problem for my guild, its a fairly simple phase. You want to make sure your tanks know what they are doing, as far as making sure Razorscale is never facing the raid, taunting at the right time to wear off the Fuse Armor debuff, and kiting Razorscale around the area, avoiding the Devouring Flames hanging out.
You probably already popped Heroism/Bloodlust on one of the times you brought Razorscale down, so just continue to pew pew and kite her around the room, and it should easily be a win. I recommend saving your Battle Rezzes for your tanks, as your tanks may find it hard to continue to taunt, with the diminishing returns on it.
Good luck with this fight, and enjoy the free epics 
Macbook
Razorscale Screenshots
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6 Responses to “Razorscale 25 Boss Strategy”
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June 16th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Yeah, there’s really no reason not to down Razorscale. Pop Heroism at the start of the first ground phase and you’ll probably only have two ground phases, three at most.
Since you mentioned battle res, I’d say it’s a sound strategy to save them for the tanks. No one should ever die in this fight, and even if they do, you can still get her down. We 20-manned her last weekend easily, though she did get 3 ground phases (didn’t get back up the third time though).
As for raid composition, we have two tanks and a couple offtanks, usually only one of which will help tank, and then only on adds (unless one of the tanks goes down when she’s permanently grounded). We have six healers (five last weekend).
As for melee staying out… there’s no reason anyone should be in the flame, ever. We let melee go in — they have instant AoE that makes quick work of the adds. We have one tank assigned to Sentinels, which he drags away from the rest of the adds so melee don’t get carved up. Melee stay on the smaller adds with the other two tanks while ranged DPS the Sentinels down.
Ground phase is more or less tank’n’spank, with a little bit of kiting and tank switching thrown in. Really easy for DPS, and not hard for tanks or healers.
We never have not gotten [A Quick Shave] in 10- or 25-man.
[Reply]
Ulduar Reply:
June 16th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I usually tell my shamans to pop Heroism at the 2nd time which we drop him, because since we usually ground him at that point, the Heroism pours over to Phase II, helping us get down leftover adds and down Razor faster.
Maybe your melee are more competent than mine — I simply don’t allow them in because I don’t trust them to live
I’m surprised you haven’t gotten the achievement, its relatively easy with decent DPS.
[Reply]
June 16th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
I worded that awkwardly. What I meant was ‘we have always gotten the achievement in our 10- and 25-man attempts’.
[Reply]
Ulduar Reply:
June 17th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Yeah, seems like I read your comment wrong. We did Razor last night and didn’t get do it fast enough to have gotten A Quick Shave (if we didn’t have it already).
I put up screenshots from last night as well.
[Reply]
July 5th, 2009 at 5:39 am
Not “letting your melee dps” into the fight and not “trusting” them to live is going to cause them problems later on in Ulduar. If your melee cannot live through a fight like Razorscale how are they going to deal with harder fights like Mimiron and Iron council? Even if you feel that melee classes are a burden to your raid, you are going to need them for fights with heavy interrupt requirements as you get further into the content. Fights such as Kologarn are infinitely easier with a sharp melee group as well, since the melee will not get the eyebeams placed on them. Frankly you should be pushing your melee to sharpen their skills on simple fights like Razorscale, or if you aren’t willing to do that, then you should be replacing them with better players. But refusing to let them enter the encounter at all is the worst possible choice you can make. Blizzard simply no longer designs encounters around the idea that “ranged is better” and not making use of your melee classes will be a mistake in the long run.
[Reply]
Macbook Reply:
July 5th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Great points, and I agree 100%. Let me clarify; that was my mindset in the beginning, we have done this fight enough times that melee does go in and nobody dies. I fully agree though that you should not pamper people into doing something an easy way because they cannot handle to do it the real way.
For example, in Vezax, people want to stack in 3 groups to minimize people taking damage by Mark of the Faceless. Although I know that 3 groups is easier, I insist on having just 1 group stacked up, forcing people to get better at moving out when someone has a mark on their head.
Thanks for commenting,
Mac
[Reply]