Ulduar impressions

Such was the interest in Ulduar, the Elder Brethren ran two 10 man groups on Tuesday night. We weren't really competing for boss first kills, or anything. Kam was there on melee DPS duty, and we even had replenishment! I was impressed by the tactics available on WoWWiki and Bosskillers, in the early days of Naxxramas there wasn't all that much available. Here is what happened on the night:

Flame Leviathan
"Don't talk to anyone!" was the advice on zoning in. We stood next to our shiny vehicles of choice for a few minutes while the abilities and tactics were explained, then finally Kam was allowed to commandeer his battered Siege Engine and off we went. The trash and towers were somewhat like doing a Wintergrasp in their vehicles, the Siege Engine stream rush helped to catch up with the group when we got split up (due to utter confusion) but as a driver I didn't get to DPS a lot of anything. My gleeful gunner, a holy priest turned nutter, did all the fun stuff.

Top tip: there are 4 towers, and the Flame Leviathan encounter starts when you destroy the gates. We didn't realize any of this, and so started our first try with 1 tower up and several vehicles locked out. We failed.

Flame Leviathan is fun, although kiting it is quite straightforward and interrupting the Flame Jets it does is easy if you are in range and have enough energy. Big if. It was so easy we are considering trying on hard mode in future just to keep it interesting.

XT-002 Deconstructor
We had a crack at this giant child because it is the DPS test for the area, so the raid was interested in a free DPS checkup. The fight itself is quite neat, in the first phase melee can go all out and DPS his legs, in the second phase Kam and the rogue DPSed the heart, while the rest cleaned up the adds.

Magma Totem and Earthbind Totem came in useful at the end of the 2nd phase, where scrapbots walk toward XT. They needed to be killed before they reached him otherwise he eats them and heals himself. The AOE damage and slowing were quite effective, plus some old-fashioned face-smashing.

Unfortunately a few things went wrong, so we called the XT attempts after a few goes.

Razorscale
Razorscale, the giant proto drake, was a neat fight with several phases. Unfortunately (or not, depending on how you look at it) the adds which should come while we were avoiding fireballs and flame rings was bugged, so we had no adds whatsoever. This meant the first phase consisted of standing around, avoiding flame rings on the ground and waiting for the harpoon guns to be repaired.

When Razorscale was dragged to the ground for phase 2, all out DPS was needed, so Ghost Wolves were called, trinkets popped and Kam went in and did as much damage as possible. She has no threat table in the ground phase, so it's a really nice chance to do some damage. However, we saved Bloodlust until phase 3 because no one was taking damage. If there were some adds we might have thought differently.

At 50% health, Razorscale landed permanently and proceeded to follow the tanks, who kited her around a big circle. I used Bloodlust when the tanks had got threat, popped Ghost Wolves and everything and tried to kill her good. The only tricky aspect for melee was trying to keep at her side while the tank kites her around - think Grobbulus and the massive pain that fight is. Her wings are so large that when they are out straight, I couldn't see Kam at all!

On our 5th or so attempt we received the unwelcome message "Server Restart in 15 minutes". This clearly focused the raid and we managed to kill her with 8 minutes to do the loot before the server went down.

Conclusion
Overall I enjoyed our run into Ulduar. The fights weren't too much of a pain for melee, the FL fight is a nice fun opener, and I like that you can choose between three bosses after FL.