As a GM, you are responsible for making decisions for the guild, especially in terms of how your raid week is broken up.  Pre-Ulduar, it was easy to break up the raid nights — my guild, <iRaid> usually raids 3 nights a week, so 1 night was usually Maly/Sarth, another night (or night and a half) was Naxx, and we usually had a spare night for 10 mans, VoA, or other things.  When Ulduar hit, we kept Naxx around as an OPTIONAL raid for a few weeks, then dropped it completely.

Up until recently, and before our Yogg kill, we used our full 12 hours of raiding (4 hours a night times 3 nights a week) on regular Ulduar.  Now that we can full clear the place with relative ease, and have begun heroic hard modes, breaking up the time has become increasingly difficult.  Here are some questions that I have:

• How many hours a week can we spend on hard modes and still manage to kill Yogg weekly?
• Does Yogg even need to be killed weekly, since hard mode loot is better than Yogg loot?
• As a progression-based guild, shouldn’t hard mode progression be considered more important that either farming hard modes that have already been downed or downing Yogg?
• With patch 3.2 nearing, should the focus be to simply get as many *new* hard modes down as possible?
• Is it necessary to farm hard modes that have already been completed if we can’t 1-shot them, or should we be more focused on killing new hard modes?

They are all tough questions, so maybe some unbiased opinions from other people could help enlighten me.  My mindset is more like — we are a progression-based guild.  Our focus should be killing new content (in this case, new hard modes).  Everything else, including getting people the gear they want, is secondary to our primary goal.

I understand that more gear will help us complete other hard modes, but its really a time crunch.  I consider 3 raid nights a week to be semi-casual raiding; and adding a consistent 4th raid night to our plate isn’t really an option at this time.  If re-doing Heroic: Heartbreaker is going to take us a few wipes to down it again, should we really waste the time for the one piece of i239 instead of using those 30 minutes on a hard mode we haven’t downed?

A *lot* of my raiders need Yogg loot.  Whether it be their T8 shoulders, or another piece, most people (myself included), want to kill him weekly.  However, we don’t 1-shot Yogg; we only recently downed him for the first time.  A Yogg re-kill could take nearly 1-2+ hours if we don’t have all of our main raiders on.  Is the time investment worth it?  Wouldn’t investing time on Iron Council hard mode be the wiser choice?

So — I guess my last question is — what do your guilds do?

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Summary

The XT-002 Deconstructor fight is one of my favorite fights in Ulduar, and is considered by many to be a “free epics” fight.  The amount of raid damage keeps healers on their toes, while the adds and heart phase of the fight makes the DPS happy.  It’s a simple 2 phase fight with a hard enrage.  The Deconstructor is one of the four bosses you must kill in order to receive the Heroic: The Siege of Ulduar achievement.

Recommended Raid Composition

You will need two tanks for this fight; one to tank XT-002 the whole time, and another to tank the large Pummeler adds that he spawns during his Heart phase.  6-7 healers is normal for this fight, and you will probably want to assign group healers to certain groups to keep the raid topped off during Tympanic Tantrum.  As far as DPS is concerned, you should be able to bring whatever classes you like, but I do recommend assigning AoEers (I usually just tell my mages to handle this) to attack the Bomb Bots and Scrap Bots during this fight.

XT-002 Abilities and Add Abilities

Tympanic Tantrum – Does a total of 120% of your health evenly throughout twelve seconds.  Even if your healers aren’t the best, your raid can survive this off a simple health stone or health potion.

Gravity Bomb and Light Bomb – These are two things that DBM will mark people for and they will have to run out of the raid group for to keep the raid alive.  The Gravity Bomb ability will drag people to it once the debuff wears off, while the Light Bomb ability will deal damage to everyone in range of the person until the debuff wears off.

At every 25% of his health, adds will appear from the 4 junk piles at every corner.  There are Scrap Bots, Boom Bots, and Pummelers, which need to be dealt with.  Pummelers will need to be tanked for the duration of the fight by your OT (they don’t hit hard), Scrap Bots should be AoE’ed down, and Boom Bots should be focus-fired down by your ranged, and hopefully near Scrap Bots (they deal damage to everything when they explode).

The XT-002 Deconstructor Fight Strategy

Engage the Deconstructor, ensuring to fully HoT up your main tank while the raid gets into position.  In the image below, you can see where we tank XT-002, in between two of the junk piles on either end of the room.  The reason for this is that he WILL NOT SPAWN ADDS ON THE TWO JUNK PILES HE IS TANKED NEAR. That is crucial to this fight, and getting some of the achievements that this fight can offer.

It shouldn’t be any problem keeping your tank or raid up (even through Tympanic Tantrum), and DPS heavily.  At 75% he will enter his first heart phase.  I recommend popping Heroism/Bloodlust during the first Heart phase, and if your DPS if somewhat decent, you should be able to bring him at or near 50% (the next Heart phase), when he is re-engaged.

All of your DPS should be focusing on the heart during the beginning of this phase, and your OT should be picking up the Pummelers (they have too much to kill them).  As I mentioned earlier, I usually assign my 3 mages to AoE down the Scrap Bots and Bomb Bots, which can heal the boss for 1% of his total health (each individual bot), and we usually end up doing it cleanly.

Depending on how competent your raid is, you can either stay clumped up into a couple of groups during the fight, or stay spread out.  Each method has its own pros and cons; we used to stay clumped in 3 groups (1 melee group, 2 ranged groups), but now that we have perfected the fight we just let everyone stand where they want and run out when they get either of the debuffs.  That is up to you.

Using the placement I recommend will save you a lot of difficultly on this fight, as placing him in the middle of the room will allow adds to spawn from all 4 quadrants of the room, and should really simplify the entire fight.  Make sure you don’t kill the Heart while DPSing it (doing so activates hard mode), and you should have this one in the bag in no time.

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XT-002 Deconstructor Screenshots

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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

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Razorscale Screenshots

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