Tonight was our first genuine attempt at getting The Immortal on our alts. We had a few mains left over from Tuesday’s raid that came along, but for the most part our group consisted of casual town and the alts. Naturally, the first four wings and Sapphiron go off without a hitch, I don’t think anyone even dropped below 50% health during the boss encounters. Kel’Thuzad goes great for the first 75%…and then he finally decides to cast mind control, Trizen and Optik both get MC’d and naturally attack the SAME TARGET, which happened to be Kloze, Klorox’s shaman.

Now here’s the question - was this just RnG screwing us over, or was this a failure on the raid’s part? I’ve had a few hours to think about it, and to be honest I think we could have prevented Klorox’s death. I know I could have polymorphed Optik faster, but in the same respect, the warlocks could have helped out with some fears. All the crowd controllers deserve equal blame I suppose. I am still shocked we came that close, everyone played exceptionally well, I really am proud to play with some of these people. We’ll keep trying for immortal until the patch comes out, and I suspect we’ll get it sooner rather than later.

I hate achievements like The Undying and The Immortal, because in my opinion they’re so dependent on getting good RnG. You can have the best players in the world and Kel’Thuzad could decide to mind control the two add tanks, correct me if i’m wrong, but tin that situation, nothing could be done. The new PTR build today revealed that Ulduar will have Immortal/Undying equivalents, so I guess we’ll just have to learn to embrace these types of achievements, because they aren’t going anywhere soon.

Last night Blizzard had us testing the encounter just beyond Ignis and Razorscale, The XT-002 Deconstructor! The fight is pretty simple, he will cast two abilities on raid members - “Light Bomb” and “Gravity Bomb” both of which will require the person to run away from the raid. Light Bomb will hit everyone for 2500 damage every second, and Gravity Bomb will detonate after 9 seconds, causing ~20k damage. XT-002 will also cast Tympanic Tantrum, an earthquake like effect that deals damage equal to 10% of your health every second for 12 seconds, everyone in the raid will need a heal in order to survive. Every 25%, the XT-002 will spawn three different types of adds - Scrapbots, Boombots and Pummeler. The Pummelers just need to be offtanked, they don’t hit very hard, but they do cleave, the Scrapbots will heal the boss if they reach him, and the Boombots…go boom, they explode for ~13k. For 20 seconds, you will be unable to target the XT-002 but instead you can target the “Heart of the Deconstructor” which is related to this encounter’s hard mode.

The hard mode for this encounter is enabled by killing the Heart of the Deconstructor, which has 5 million health (but takes 100% extra damage) and is up for 20 seconds. So within those 20 seconds your raid has to do the equivalent of 2.5 million damage over 20 seconds (125,000 RDPS) in order to enable the hard mode. The major bug with the heart was that melee could not attack it. I think we could have enabled the hard mode if we made some group changes but due to time limitations, we decide to kill him in easy mode once again and get more people familiar with the fight. Once hard mode is enabled, XT-002 is healed to full and gains 25% more health and damage, in addition, Light Bomb and Gravity Bomb gain new effects. Light Bomb now spawns an add that will cast Static Shock on the raid, on 25 man it will hit for 1500 damage every 3 seconds.

3.1 PTR - XT-002 Deconstructor Preview

The 3.1 PTR may be coming to a close soon, I believe there are only two bosses left to test, Mimiron and Auriaya, since Algalon and Yogg-Saron more than likely won’t be tested. A guildmate brought up a good point the other night, Patch 3.1 has to be out before April 12th, because of the Noblegarden changes. That gives us a few potential 3.1 release dates - March 24th, March 31st, April 7th. I’m gonna put my money on March 31st, mainly because the 24th seems too soon and April 7th is cutting it too close to Noblegarden. Either way, 3.1 is coming!

On Friday night we got another opportunity to test The Iron Council again. We only got an hour and a half worth of testing before they closed the instance. Most of that time was spent learning the hard mode version of the encounter, which involved killing Steelbreaker last. The difficulty level for this encounter is determined by your kill order. Whenever a council members die, the remaining members receive an increased damage buff in addition to new abilities. The ability Steelbreaker obtains when he is the last mob up is very similar to Vaelastrasz the Corrupt in Blackwing Lair. The debuff is called “Overwhelming Power” which is cast randomly on raid members, it gives them 200% increased damage for 1 minute, after which the player will die and hit everyone around him for 9000 damage. Additionally, whenever one of your raid members dies, Steelbreaker’s damage will be increased by 25%…essentially this turns the fight into a DPS race, similar to M’uru Phase 2. We came pretty close on a few attempts but once the developers announced that Ulduar is closing in 15 minutes we decided to get an easy mode kill and check out the loots. This time, I remembered to record the encounter.

The Iron Council Preview - 3.1 PTR

Tonight was Kologarn, the “bridge boss” of Ulduar which can be found just beyond the door leading from the Antechamber to the Shattered Walkway. As usual, our night was plagued with crit errors and many fierce battles with the blue bar boss! In the midst of our troubles, we managed to pull together and defeat the boss the right way. I talked to a few of my friends in Crimson & Alpha and they all used a strategy that involved focusing all DPS on Kologarn himself, completely ignoring the arms. In my opinion, this is not the correct strategy. The strategy we developed has the raid focusing DPS on the right arm until it dies, then switching to Kologarn. Wait for the right arm to respawn, kill it, get back on Kologarn, rinse and repeat!

Kologarn Preview - 3.1 PTR

It’s a bit refreshing to know that the hard modes for Ulduar will present a decent challenge at the very least. Two of the encounters we’ve been able to test so far didn’t have a hard mode (Ignis & Kologarn). I’m definately looking forward to testing more encounters that have a hard mode enabled.

So tonight Blizzard had us do another round of testing on Hodir. The only notable change was his HP, he went down from ~35 Million to around 25 Million, easy fight becomes even easier! My guess is that they did this in order to make the hard mode possible. It’s already been discovered that Hodir’s hard mode requires you to kill him within 3 minutes, before he shatters the rare cache of Hodir. In order to accomplish this, the raid must put out a minium of 138,888 DPS. With the help of some Ulduar gear and the buffs we get from the adds, this achievement should be doable once it’s on farm status.

Hodir Preview - 3.1 PTR

Since the previous Hodir video was buggy, and was recorded in 10 man, I decided to create a new one! Again, please let me know what you think of the quality.

The hardest part of this encounter was getting everyone in the instance. After about an hour of fighting the blue bar boss, we were able to get 25 inside the instance, three attempts later, Hodir was dead. Easy boss, slightly more challenging than Flame Leviathan & Ignis, definately looking forward to doing the achievement.

So tonight we got to test Ignis The Furnace Master in Ulduar. The encounter is extremely simple and requires no real strategy whatsoever. Ignis will randomly cast Scorch, which will leave a large flame patch on the ground, he will also spawn a construct every minute which must be tanked or rooted inside the flame patch. As the construct is sitting in the flame patch it will eventually heat up and become molten. Once the construct has become molten it must be moved into one of two small pools of water. Once in the water the construct will become brittle and will die after 5000 damage. Ignis’ only somewhat menacing ability is Flame Jets, which is cast on the entire raid every 30-45 seconds. Flame Jets will interrupt any spells and lock you out of that school for 8 seconds, so when you see him casting the spell, hold off on casting until he finishes his cast. It will also leave a fire damage DoT on everyone in the raid. Easy.

We did Ignis in both Heroic (25) and Normal (10), I didn’t think we’d kill him so fast in Heroic so I forgot to record the kill, but I did manage to get the 10 man version. Again, I am still experimenting with different encoding options so please feel free to comment on loading speed, video quality, etc. When Ulduar is released on live realms I’ll have a real nice intro scene for future Achievement/Boss Kill videos. It’s in the early planning phases now and when I get some more free time I’ll finish it up and post a preview.

Ignis The Furnace Master Preview - 3.1 PTR

These encounters are much easier than I had hoped for. To be honest, i’m a bit worried about Ulduar, I had some really high expectations but thus far i’m really dissapointed. I know that the hard modes will be more difficult but I was Definately looking forward to testing some challenging content in the near future.

Yesterday afternoon Daelo announced that Ulduar would open its doors at 4pm PST/7pm EST for testing Hodir. This goes without saying…but the servers were extremely laggy and unstable. The real challenge for the night was just getting into the raid instance. Our GM made the decision to transfer the guild over to the PVP server as opposed to the PVE server in hopes that the PVP server would have better stability…well if last night was any indication of what future PTR testing is going to be like, i’m not really looking forward to it. It was pretty difficult to get a raid together with the world server crashing every minute.

With any luck the realm stability will improve, i’ve heard from some friends over on the PVE server, and apparently it’s even worse. So, definitely glad we’re on the PVP server, even though getting ganked randomly is extremely annoying.

I’ve created a simple video that shows the 10man version of the Hodir fight. We were only able to get in a handful of attempts, but we managed to get him to 16% and ended up wiping to the enrage.

Hodir Preview - 3.1 PTR

I’m also testing out higher resolution streaming video on the website, please let me know what you think! Stay tuned for The Iron Council tomorrow night @ 4pm.

Nearly 3 months after the release of Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard is finally putting out some new content! Forlorn Legacy will be hitting the PTR’s very hard as soon as Ulduar is activated. Our good friend Daelo (Lead Encounter Developer @ Blizzard) announced a while back that there will be set times where people will be able to test Ulduar. He also said that certain encounters won’t be tested at all, and some encounters would be tested only on the European PTR’s. This is an interesting new approach Blizzard is taking to testing new raid content. Anyway, I wanted to share some thoughts on a few of the new features coming in Patch 3.1…

Ulduar

Most guild have had Naxxramas, The Obsidian Sanctum and The Eye of Eternity on farm status for months. Personally, Naxxramas can goto hell as far as i’m concerned, I did it at Level 60, ran weekly pugs at Level 70, and I run it 4 times a week at Level 80. I’m sure there are people out there who share my sentiments, a new raid instance has been long overdue. Ulduar will feature 14 bosses, 11 of them having optional hard modes. Personally, I love the concept behind hard modes, they offer another level of difficulty and more replay value. My only qualm is when achievements like Heroic: You Don’t Have An Eternity and You Don’t Have An Eternity don’t offer any rewards beyond the achievement points. Sartharion 3 Drake is a perfect example of rewarding players for the extra level of difficulty.

Dual Talent Specialization

This is quite possibly one of the most anticipated features to date. Dual Talent Specialization allows you to pickup a second set of talents and glyphs that you can switch to at any given moment (as long as you’re not in combat). When this feature was first announced, you would need to be near a Lexicon of Power in order to switch specs, but it seems they had a last minute change of heart. When the PTR’s went live, the Lexicon of Power requirement was lifted, you can now respec anywhere. I recently setup Dual Specs on my Paladin (Holy/Ret) and Mage, (Frostfire/Arcane) the one time fee you have to pay to your class trainer is currently 1000g, but with the amount of complaining going on…the price may go down. Personally I think 1000g is adequate, but for some people that amount of gold is hard to come by. I can see both sides of the argument.

Argent Tournament

This came as a surprise, I don’t think anyone was expecting this but it seems like a pretty cool concept. The Argent Crusade has setup a new camp just north of Sindragosa’s Fall in Icecrown, they’re in the process of building a coliseum that’s supposedly getting added in a future patch. The whole purpose of this event is to introduce mounted combat, you’ll be able to get a special mount that you can use to fight players and NPC’s. The initial questline teaches you how to use the new Tournament mounts, you get 4 basic abilities - Attack, Ranged Attack, Charge & Block. There’s also bunch of dailies available from Silver Covenant/Sunreaver NPC’s in their respective camps. That’s right, they’ve finally implemented the Silver Covenant and the Sunreavers. I was unable to find a quartermaster for either faction but i’m sure it will be implemented by the time 3.1 goes live.

All in all, Patch 3.1 is looking good, long overdue…but still good! I’m anticipating a 2 month stay on the PTR before going live, so we’re looking at a late April/early May release.