Tonight, we’re working on a brand new Ulduar boss: Kologarn on Heroic mode. He’s a large titan that stands at the top of the stairs in the Antechamber. And by large, he’s a bloody huge one! However, we only ever see above his waist and interestingly enough, his hands are also targettable to be DPS’d as well. His hands grip 2 people at a time for a lot of damage, similar to Encapsulate from Felmyst, and to break out of them, the hand has to suffer 450,000 damage. His other abilities he has includes a Nature damage based Shockwave, a targetted Eyebeam, and a Petrifying Breath on random people as well. It’s also interesting to note that when you kill an arm, he spawns a number of adds that do about 7500 AoE damage when you kill them (similar to the adds from Garr in Molten Core). Lastly, he hits the tank with a stackable armor debuff for 25% each application.

So, after getting everyone in the raid and buffed up, we engage Kologarn and try to damage his right arm first. We end up killing it, but because we didn’t know about the adds and the AoE damage they did, we (of course) AoE’d the adds and our raid just gets smoked in the end. Second attempt, we try DPSing the left arm first this time, but we found that the people gripped in the right arm weren’t being freed and, as such, those people ended up dying.

After those 2 attempts, people started crashing and, of course, couldn’t get past the blue bar boss. After nearly half an hour of trying to get the rest of the raid together, Daelo ends up punting everyone out of Ulduar and back to the login screen.

However, that doesn’t stop us from continuing. No sir. We get everyone back together in front of Kologarn and ready to go, even after Daelo announces a shutdown, and proceed to kill him within 2 attempts after the reset. All in all, it’s a very fun fight, though perhaps there could be a few tweaks needed here and there.

Our videos of the fight can be found at here:

Streaming Video: http://blog.forlornlegacy.net/videos…ideo-kologarn/
HD Video: http://media.forlornlegacy.net/fl-kologarn-ptr.avi

Next up, Flame Leviathan Round 2!

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.

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.