I spent some time looking at youtube strategies for the Ultraxion encounter. It's one of those rare encounters where raiders barely have to move, but the fight itself has many facets. The tanks have the toughest learning curve, I believe. Most of the battle occurs inside the Twilight phase. There are regular periods where Hour of Twilight is cast by Ultraxion. Raiders have a special ability located on a large button that gets us the hell out of Twilight when that cast comes. All except the current tank, who has to stay inside and survive the huge blast. The two tanks have to carefully choreograph swapping and taunting so that they can survive and recover from those monster hits. The healers have to deal with damage that grows and grows as the fight progresses. Healers do get some help, though. Over the course of the fight three crystals form, one at a time, each with it's own special buff. Taking a crystal gives the healer that buff, which lasts the rest of the battle. For example, Wild was asked to take the Essence of Dream crystal, which doubles Wild's healing and spreads that healing across the raid.
One thing Wild didn't understand were the two times on the night before when Wild was essentially one shot. I wanted to know why. I suspected the culprit was Fading Light, a debuff that hits the current tank and one random player. I've read that Ultraxion rarely if ever puts that debuff on a healer, but then Wild isn't always a healer for this fight. Wild couldn't be sure I would see the Fading Light notice from the addon Deadly Boss Mobs, but I did know how to count it down so that whether Wild had it or not, Wild could block it by hitting the "save me" button (to get Wild out of Twilight) at the right time.
But, before all that we had to get the raid together. That went rather quickly, but there were some comings and goings which held things up a little. One of our regular healers, Vl, was out again this week, so Bd switched from his tanking toon to his healing shaman. Wild and the priest, Pl, were the other two healers. We had two paladins for tanks. Things were really hopping for a Thursday night, and at least six guildies in the raid gathered together outside the Inn in the Valley of Honor. We fired off fireworks, tossed medicine balls and paper airplanes at each other, showed off our rarest mounts, and danced around each other like Indians preparing for love or war. Wild set up his rocking horse for others to ride and rode around on his Raven Lord mount while disguised as a murloc. Such gatherings used to be a regular occurrence, and it brought back some nice memories.
While the carousing was going on, Wild got a whisper from Silver in her new guise. Silver, now known as Hearte, crossed from the pvp realm of Boulderfist to the pve realm of Silvermoon to lend a hand and sage advice to our raiding efforts. Wild got hold of a guild officer and she was welcomed into the guild. As the raid start got close, Hearte asked for luck as she cantered off to give the Dragon Soul lfr a shot. Then it was off to Dragon Soul for Wild, as well.
We assembled at the staging area for Ultraxion. First, though, we had to bring down the fourteen dragons. We botched our first attempt. Wild was mercilessly harried by dragons and every heal to save myself or someone else brought more of them down on Wild. It was all good, though, Wild lived longer than the tank, although not by much. It seemed like a Friday night all evening. Raiders were too happy or too drunk or just in a good mood. We took down all the dragons on our second attempt.
Enter Ultraxion. The big bad dragon single shot the entire raid at the beginning of the encounter. Wow. The tank said that after the fight was started every attempt to aggro Ultraxion was Evaded. And then we all died.
That didn't dampen any spirits, and back at him we went again. We were using a three healer strategy. Wild was again asked to DPS for the first phase of the fight, which Wild delighted in doing. We wiped two times as the tanks learned the tricky dance of swapping tanks with each phase while staying alive long enough for a healer to come back into the twilight to heal them.
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| Ultraxion Leaves a Pile of Bodies |
On our next attempt we started to get the rhythm and wiped with Ultraxion at 17% health. We'd never come close to that before now. We slipped backwards on our next attempt. The raid leader worked each issue. The problem at first was the tank swaps, and that was fixed and now working fine. Then the problem became insufficient DPSing on the boss to kill him before the hard wipe at six minutes. To address that, we decided to try the two healer strategy. The extra DPS was nice, but Wild's priest healing partner did not have the mana to last long enough to get the mana regen crystal. The DPS was making good strides, though, so after three tries with two healers, we went back to three healers.
On our very next attempt, we took down Ultraxion. We were now 5/8 kills in Dragon Soul. Wild was a little taken aback that the resto shaman was out healing Wild. Not by a lot, but Wild takes that as a challenge for next week.
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| Ultraxion KILL! |
There were two drops. After getting those shoulders on Wednesday, Wild was not really thinking about loot. However, the first drop was the T13 chest. Wild has the i384 version - this was the i397. Wild lost the roll. The second drop was a very nice caster/healer off-hand. Again, Wild already had the i384 version. The priest rolled first - a 65. Wild delayed, checking how much of an upgrade it would be. Wild finally rolled - 98!
Wild asked the priest what weapon she had. It was an i378 staff. The off-hand was of no immediate use to her if she didn't have a one-hand to go with it. She did. She was carrying around had the same i390 mace that Wild had hoping to find an off-hand for it. So, if Wild kept the drop he would get an upgrade from i384 to i397. If the priest got it, she would swap her i378 staff for the i390/i397 mace/off-hand combo. It was a no brainer. Wild passed the off-hand to the priest in good conscience.
We all trooped over to the flying ship, the Skyfire. This is a fun fight with a bunch of mini-bosses to deal with. Wild has never seen this fight except in the lfr, though. It's an easy fight in the lfr, but once the raid leader began explaining all of the mechanics for the ten man, Wild was astonished at how little he really knew. We had time for three tries, and at least Wild felt that he learned a lot that was missing in his lfr runs.
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| Skyfire Corpses |
Yes, that's Wild plastered up on the forecastle of the Skyfire. Wild was blasted up there on our final wipe of the night.
It was a great night for partying with guildies; taking down Ultraxion made it all the better, and getting some time on the Skyfire was icing on the cake. Our gear is getting better, our confidence is growing, and Dragon Soul is starting, at last, to fear us.
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