The Antechamber

With the Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and XT-002 defeated on Wednesday, the Gold Team was left with a choice - continue into the Antechamber of Ulduar or finish The Siege of Ulduar...we chose the Siege! To Ignis we went. Our first strategy was to be the "normal" strategy whereby Aravic would tank Ignis in a circular pattern while Santorum would pick up the adds and, via Vetarra's roots, trap them in the fire until they became brittle, at which point I would blow them up. We tried this strategy quite a few times and it all worked well until Ignis would pick up Vetarra or Santorum and put them in his naughty bits bucket. Then the roots would be gone, we'd have extra adds, or they would have no tank and they'd run over the raid. So it was finally decided...ZERG!

The zerg strategy is quite a bit tougher, but really, the only way to complete Stokin' the Furnace - which we didn't even get close to, but perhaps with one less healer and more DPS we could get close. To zerg Ignis, you tank him right on the border of a pool so the Scorch he does doesn't leave pillars of fire. Meanwhile, Santorum needed to pick up the adds and just hold them while doing DPS to to the boss. It's a simple race against time in the zerg strategy. Because for each Iron Construct add left alive, Ignis gains a 15% damage buff. I believe at one point, he was doing 135% more damage, maybe even 150%. Our first attempt was a learning experience - trying to figure out where to place the Constructs, how to heal through the massive damage, etc. But after a couple of zerg attempts, Ignis went down, we received The Siege of Ulduar and a few of us got Hot Pocket.


With Ignis down, we gathered everyone up and prepared to enter the Antechamber of Ulduar. After getting past some trash in the antechamber, we were rewarded with a beautiful sight...


Ulduar truly is a spectacle of immense proportions. It's quite obvious that it was in fact built by the titans and they spared no expense. It's a massive, beautiful place to visit, until, of course, you encounter someone that wants to rip you limb from limb.


After learning the Kologarn fight, it took us 4-5 tries to defeat him using a strategy of blowing all cooldowns at the start to defeat the Right Arm, then having ranged DPS AOE down the adds while melee DPS continued to focus on the body. Ranged DPS then focused on the body when adds were down and everyone switched back to the arm when it was reconstructed. We found that defeating the left arm is not a good idea as more adds are spawned and the damage the arm does is inconsequential. Make sure you watch out for him when you enter his chamber, he does try his best to surprise you!


With Kologarn down, we considered continuing across his "bridge" to Auriaya, but decided to back track a bit to the Iron Council. At the Iron Council, we had 4 or so attempts before it was time to call it for the night. I'm quite certain we'll be able to get them down next week - we got close a couple of times but ran into healing or interrupting issues.


Next week I'm hopeful that we can get through the Iron Council and Auriaya to then have fun with the Keepers of Ulduar - I'm especially wanting to see Freya...go go Gold Team!