by Basil Berntsen

Frost Lotus is a component of raiding flasks, and it is gathered as a very rare chance from regular herb nodes, as well as Frost Lotus nodes that appear in Wintergrasp and Freya’s room in Ulduar. The price of Frost Lotus has skyrocketed since patch 3.3 on many servers. This is partly due to the large increase in demand for flasks that the new content brought us, but I believe partly because of a reduction in supply.

The supply of Frost Lotus is and always has been low, however as I mentioned in my last column, there are ways to farm it. The most popular one was to get saved to an Ulduar raid ID where Freya‘s Elders (Brightleaf, Ironbranch, and Stonebark) have been killed, but Freya herself hasn’t, allowing the herb nodes to respawn. Getting the nodes to respawn simply requires a “soft reset” of the instance, which means nobody zones in for 30 minutes.

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via Tanking Tips

The World of Weapons

Entering Icecrown, we’ve got a number of interesting weapons to choose from and if you’ve kept up with the content, I think you’ll be hard pressed to not have something usable. The larger question though isn’t what is usable, but instead what’s desirable. What didn’t drop for me that should have. Is anything worth still running pre-Icecrown instances for? You bet. Let’s begin.

Heroics

Red Sword of Courage
Upon launch this was the must have weapon that you ran Utgarde Pinnacle for over and over again for and if you’ve just hit 80, it’s still a great first item to pursue.

Axe of the Sen’jin Protector / Teldrassil Protector
Acquired via Champion’s Seals from running Heroic ToC5, this pair of axes offers more of a “sure thing” if you’re unlucky acquiring the superior sword above. It should be noted though for those of you that rollled Orcs that this is the better choice due to it activating your Expertise racial.

Lucky Old Sun
Regular Forge of Soul’s recent addition to the Heroic tanking weapon selection. Nice and fast with excellent itemization. It will serve you well for the short time you’ll use it before acquiring any of the upcoming heroic items.

Peacekeeper Blade
It’s kind of a cardinal rule that if something has an extra socket on the rest of the field, it’s going to be awesome. This blade doesn’t disappoint making it easily the best starter tanking weapon you can acquire out of the easier heroics. [Heroic ToC5]

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My guild and I are fairly new in ulduar and aren’t geared very well. We discovered the trick after a few fails.

1. Have a higher item leveled person (better gear) jump into the bike.
2. Have that person jump into the passenger seat with the bike icon.
3. Have a lower item level person jump into the driver’s seat and launch the passenger out by pressing 4.

This leaves the bike with the first person’s item stats. Very helpful if your guild is new or lower item level. Also, for those who think its possibly a display bug, please check % as fight progresses.

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Alright to explain this… We had a character with lower item level gear, therefore his health in the bike was extremely low.

What you do is have a person with higher item level gear get into the bike. They then jump into the passenger seat with the bike icon to the right.

After that, have the lower item level character jump in the driver seat and shoot the passenger out by pressing 4.

This leaves the bike with still the same amount of health the higher level item gear passenger gave it. Rinse and repeat if you have very low level item geared people!

This is not just a display bug, the health on the bikes drops in percentage along with the fight. We used this on 4 tower flame leviathan.

Worked Great!

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Written by mek

Introduction

This is going to be the hardest challenge in achieving your Heroic: Glory of the Raider. It has received significant nurfs recently and while this does make it quite a lot easier, the technical elements of the fight are still there. It’s without a doubt the favorite encounter of both myself and Ensidia as a whole. It’s something that challenges your entire raid rather than a few players in important roles. There is no better way to test the raid awareness of players and the ability to tweak your play to get out more dps and healing. This is a four Phase encounter, the first three are totally different from each other and the fourth combines elements of the first three. There is an enrage timer of 10 minutes that you need to constantly be aware of. To engage Mimiron’s hardmode you push the huge red button at the back of the room that says “DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON”.

Abilities

During all Phases fire patches that follow the nearest player (similar to Archimonde) will spawn continuously throughout the fight and need to be controlled.

-Leviathan MkII- (Phase 1)

Napalm Shell – DoT attack that targets one player but also hits anyone standing near them. Deals around 11-12k impact damage and ticks for about 6k (ticks 8 times). 2 second cast
Plasma Blast – Channeled cast on the current Tank and deals over 30k per second for 6 seconds. 3 second initial cast
Shock Blast – Deals 100k damage to anyone within 15 yards, 5 second cast and does not move while casting
Flame Suppressant – Leviathon will extinguish all fires in the room and debuff all players with 50% casting speed reduction for 8 seconds.

-VX-001 Anti Personnel Assault Cannon- (Phase 2)

Heat Wave – Initially hits for about 10k on entire raid and ticks for another 2k per second for the next 5 seconds
Rapid Burst – Targets someone in the raid (doesn’t actually show on frames who it’s targeting) and hits everyone in a cone towards that person for around 2k
Rocket Strike – Targets a location (orange/red target on the ground) and launches a rocket there doing 5 million damage. 4 second cast.
Spinning up – 4 second preparation to cast Laser Barrage
P3Wx2 Laser Barrage – Spams 20k damage shots within 80 yards in front of him, turns slowly clockwise while casting (think Dark Glare on c’thun)
Frost Bomb – Launches a large blue sphere that lands at a random place in the room (near fires) that after 10 seconds will explode dealing 50k damage and extinguishing all the fires within 30 yards

-Aerial Command Unit- (Phase 3)

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Written by mek

Introduction

This is the first hardmode where the difficulty starts to take a step up. This fight requires good coordination and execution while keeping your boss damage extremely high. The strategy I am going to be recommending is the kill order Small -> Medium -> Large. There are people that do not believe that this is the best order but it will be illustrated exactly why this is the best. There are many strategies out there and most of them seem inefficient and overly complicated, we have always done this exactly the same way and it works well. The most difficult part of the fight is understanding how to keep your tanks alive when dealing with the Fusion Punch and there will be details on exactly how to manage that here.

Abilites

Not all of the possible abilities are going to be listed here, only the ones that occur if you do the fight in the particular order for this guide. Just for the sake of saying it, all of the Council have the same 10 million hit points despite their size.

Supercharge – This is an ability that applies to all 3 mobs. When one of them dies the other(s) will gain a 25% damage bonus and an additional ability. This means that when two are dead the last member will gain a 50% increase.

-Steelbreaker (large)-

Fusion Punch – This is a huge 35k nature damage hit that places a DoT on the target for 4 seconds that does an addional 20k damage every 1 second. The DoT is however dispellable.
High Voltage – Aura that does 3k damage to your entire raid every 3 seconds
Static Disruption – This ability only occurs after the Small mob has been killed. Targeted AoE that does 7k damage to all players within 6 yards of the targeted player. Will not target people in melee if ranged are available. It also places a stacking debuff that increases Nature damage by 75% for 20 seconds.
Overwhelming Power – Only occurs when Steelbreaker is the last one standing. Targets the current highest threat player and causes them to deal 200% more damage but at the end of the 30 second duration the player will gain Meltdown (see below).
Meltdown – Once Overwhelming Power completes casting, the player is killed and deals 30k damage to anyone standing nearby. You cannot stop this player from dying.
Electrical Charge – If someone in your raid dies when Steelbreaker is the only mob remaining then he will heal for 15% of his health and gain 25% damage (stacks). The healing effect can be reduced with healing debuffs such as Mortal Strike.

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Written by mek

Introduction

This encounter probably has the least finesse factor and the highest RNG factor of all of the Ulduar hardmodes. The aim is to kill him in less than 3 minutes, BigWigs has a timer that u can use to track this achievement. It’s all about optimising your damage and ultimately doing a huge amount of boss damage without people dying. It’s very simple and all the mechanics are the same as normal difficulty. The main issues are that not only do you rely on luck regarding how the NPC’s behave but also luck on who gets buffed with what and the positioning of the various buffs. However since this fight was reduced to 3 minutes it has become significantly easier and should no longer present much of a problem!

NPC’s

There are 8 NPC’s on this fight that are designed to assist you, if done correctly they provide huge damage buffs that with a bit of luck will guide you to success. It’s important to understand the capabilities of all these NPC’s and how best to utilise them before the rest of the fight is dicussed.

-Mage-

There are two mages: Missy Flamecuffs and Sissy Flamecuffs as Alliance. Veesha Blazeweaver and Amira Blazeweaver as Horde. Mages are the most important npc’s to keep alive and keep operational.

Toasty Fire: The Mages place fires on the ground, these are useful for 2 reasons: Firstly you cannot be frost nova’d or be affected by Biting Cold while standing near them. Secondly your magic attacks will apply a stacking debuff and also deal and extra 3k damage or so. This stacking debuff (called Singed) stacks up to a total of 25 times giving 50% magic damage taken debuff. This is an extremely important debuff to keep up.
Melt Ice: This is cast on players or NPC’s who are frozen with Flash Freeze, this is an extremely effective way to do this since it removes the freeze in 10 seconds and means players do not have to dps the frozen target.
Fireball: These NPC’s also deal damage, it’s not much but it’s the most of all the npc’s in terms of personal dps

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Written by mek

Introduction

This used to be the easiest hardmode, now it’s probably Hodir due to the significant nerfs that encounter received. That being said this is still a good place to test your raid out before attempting the significantly harder Freya and Mimiron hardmodes. It’s a 2 Phase fight, your first challenge is to trigger the hardmode by defeating the tunnel “gauntlet” before Sif despawns. The second part is the fight with Thorim himself with Sif up and disrupting your raid (she can be a major pain). This is a good all around fight, you need strong tanks, good dps and capable healers. There’s also a couple of good checks of how much people are paying attention to what is going on around them, all in all not a bad boss with plenty of elements.

Abilities

All of the abilities of all of the trash mobs before the boss are not going to be referenced here, it will just be the abilities of Thorim and Sif.

-Thorim-

Chain Lightning – The classic chain lightning ability that we have all seen many times before. The first hit does around 5k damage and it will arc to nearby players if standing too close. In a recent change this was capped at 6 targets but since it’s a 50% increase per jump this still means certain death for a couple of players.
Lightning Charge – An orb at the side of the room is activated, Thorim draws power from this orb sending out a bolt of lightning that does around 20k damage in a cone between boss and orb. Everytime this is casted Throim gains another stack of the Lightning Charge buff on himself. Each charge grants 15% physical damage and attack speed, additionally he was also do 10% more nature damage. Roughly a 10 second cooldown.
Unbalancing Strike – A 200% weapon damage hit that also reduces defense by 200 for 15 seconds, this one can hurt.

-Sif-

Frostbolt – This is an approximately 12k damage frostbolt that she spams on single targets when she isn’t otherwise occupied. She also does a Frostbolt Volley which hits every target in the room with the same attack every 10-15 seconds.
Frost Nova – She teleports to a random location in the room and then casts the nova (2.5 sec cast). It is sometimes possible to move away from her intime when she is casting this. Does around 14k damage and also snares all targets it hits.
Blizzard – A blizzard that moves clockwise around the outside of the room, it causes 4.5k damage per tick. You should always try and predict this coming for you and move in advance, if it spawns on you and you are in trouble then call for Freedom and run anti-clockwise out of it.

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Written by mek

Introduction

The infamous vehicle-based encounter! Either love it or hate it, this is the first hardmode encounter in Ulduar. You need full hardmode for Glory of the Raider and it also drops some of the best items available for your raid so you want to get this down. While the fight has recently been nerfed, all of the concepts in this guide remain true.

Once you zone in, do not proceed down the ramp until everyone is ready. To enable hardmode, you should first talk to Lore Keeper Norgannon and enable the additional defenses. If at a later time you decide you want to reduce the difficulty, you can then kill off as many of the four Towers in the trash area as you wish. This guide will be focused on how to kill the 4 Tower version of the encounter known as Orbituary. Once hardmode has been enabled, you should talk to Brann to initiate the encounter, this will make all of the vehicles usable. Do not proceed down the ramp until all your raiders have clicked ready and are in their vehicles.

Vehicles

To fully understand this fight you need to first understand the full capabilities of the vehicles you have available to you. You should have 5 Demolishers, 5 Siege Engines and 5 Choppers. If for some reason a vehicle despawns, which can happen, just wait and it will respawn in a while. The first fundamental concept to understand is that the Health Points and Damage of your vehicle is determined by the average item level of your character. Item level is a number attached to all items which determines the total number of stats the item has. Standard Naxxramas items are 213. Kel’thuzad, Sartharion 2/3 drakes and Malygos items are all 226. Standard Ulduar are 226 (weapons 232) and hardmode items are 239. Note that these numbers are based on 25-man, 10-man are 7-13 ilvl less on average. Do not care about your stats at all, only ilvl counts. Furious Gladiator items are excellent to use here due to the 232 ilvl set items. Okay, so now that you are wearing your highest possible ilvl items it’s time to enter the vehicles.

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