[DRAGON SOUL] Ultraxion

[Lithasola]

Looks like a simple enough fight watch this vid and then plz read the text in the links for a fuller understanding of the abilities



http://www.learntoraid.com/2011/11/26/u ... 25-normal/
http://www.icy-veins.com/ultraxion-detailed-strategy

The key to this fight is distributing the buffs given by the NPC's to the best advantage between your healers and making sure people know the right time to use the buff called 'Heroic Will'.

- Stack up in front of the boss, he doesnt parry so everyone should be stacked for AoE healing.
- He pulls us into the Twilight realm as soon as the fight starts, at this point note the big purple button on your screen, this is your 'oh SH%T' button, it activates the ability called 'Heroic Will' heroic will drops you out of the twilight realm for 5 seconds making you immune to all the bosses abilities but also incapacitates you for the duration.
- Heroic Will is only used at 2 spells. These are Hour of Twilight and Fading Light which I will go into in more detail.
- DPS will be assigned to soak dmg in the twilight realm when he casts 'Hour of Twilight'.
- Healers will be assigned which colour crystal they should take according to the buff it gives and how it helps their role.
- Tanks will have a taunt rotation established to deal with the 'Fading Light' spell he casts.


•Hour of Twilight - The Hour of Twilight falls upon Ultraxion's foes. Enemies caught within the Twilight Realm take 300000 unresistable Shadow damage. Enemies within the normal realm are instantly pulled back into the Twilight Realm. If no enemies are hit by Hour of Twilight, the Aspects will take the full brunt of the attack.

So to deal with this we assign a minimum of 3 dps to soak the dmg, these dps will need a CD that mitigates magical dmg such as DK's with anti magic shell and I think rogues with Cloak of shadows will work? The people not assigned to take dmg pop their 'Heroic Will' button to shift them into the normal realm, once he's cast Hour of twilight we will be drawn back into the twilight realm and resume fighting. Timing will be important, dont pop heroic will too early remember it only lasts for 5 seconds. also people who are assigned to take damage please remember the buff from thrall reduces the CD on defensive abilities by 50% so we should hopefully be able to use the same people each time he casts Hour of twilight. If not then we will establish a rotation of grps of dps with CD's that work.

•Fading Light - Sucks the light out of the target, drawing them into twilight. Upon expiration, targets in the Twilight Realm will be instantly killed. Targets in the normal realm will be pulled into the Twilight Realm, and all threat against Ultraxion will be reset. Additionally, Physical damage taken is increased by 100%.

This is a debuff that effects the current tank and 2 random dps, if your still in the twilight realm when the duration of this cast/debuff hits 0, your a goner. Tanks who recieve this need to be taunted off of asap due to the 100% increased physical dmg. So once hes cast this spell the OT needs to taunt off the MT straight away, not just before the they hit 'Heroic Will'. The people affected by this spell need to watch thier timer on the debuff and use 'Heroic Will' at the appropriate time. my understanding is you will be removed to the normal realm and the buff will either go off without damaging you or it will be cancelled. If its cancelled by using 'Heroic Will' then we might not need to wait till there's less than 5 secs.



Basically the fight looks like a tank and spank where we use a granted ability to avoid his most devastating attacks and some very nice buffs to help our healers deal with the increasing AoE dmg. The longer the fight goes on the faster his dmg comes until at 6mins he goes Kamikaze on our asses so there is an enrage timer people the fight becomes a dps race. There are a few points I'd like some feedback on to help make descisions for our tactics.

- can anyone confirm that its 2 crystals (healer buffs) per colour on 25 man.
- is Fading Light cancelled by Heroic will or do we have to time it so we dont pop Heroic Will too early.
- which classes have good magical dmg reduction CD's and will they be able to use them each time he casts Hour of Twilight or am I going to have to set up a rotation of people to soak the dmg.

Feel free to make comments and suggestions

[Sarri]

We could see if Barkskin works or cats can go bear and use SI? I dont think I have FR in my cat spec tho which might have been better

[Lithasola]

No hun Druids have a big disadvantage when it comes to magical damage, I know pure bear specced ferals have a flat 6% magical dmg mitigated via talents but other than that we dont have anything that can be popped to save us here from taking the full 100000 portion if we use 3 dps to stay in the twilight realm.

Would be better to mitigate it than to eat it

[Daegranos]

Seeing as sub rogues are screwed over for ultraxion I'm willing to change my spec to include enveloping shadows (decreases aoe damage by 30%, stacks with feint's 50%) to eat every cast of hour of twilight. The CD of clos is too long to use it all the time.

If all rogues have over 150k HP then we could make it so that rogues eat hour of twilight all the time. Otherwise we can make a proper rotation between rogues, hunters, shadow priests, dks and tanks. Ferals can survive easily enough with Si+barkskin. Just keep in mind that I will be able to eat all of the hour of twilights.

Edit: if we have Alaedon he can easily survive each hour of twilight by alternating divine protection (glyphed)+ardent and divine protection(glyphed)+divine guardian.

[Sarri]

If you have lag or framerate issues on this fight, disable anything that references the combat log, Recount/Skada, Omen, Battle text. Its a known issue.

[Sarri]

From the Fluid Druid forums:

If you are doing this fight on 25 man, the simplest solution we found for dealing with the Hour of Twilight was to have two tanks and a subtlety rogue eat all of them. We have a warrior and a feral tanking, and since the warrior has more consistent cooldowns we made sure he was the targeted tank for every Hour of Twilight so the healers know who to focus first when coming back into the Twilight Realm. On the alternate Hour of Twilights when the feral uses Frenzied Regen, his life drops lower than when he uses Survival Instincts, down to around 30k compared to over 80k. The warrior always ends up around 80k.

I was picking up the LDoA debuff every time (basically swapping to Bear form near the start of the fight when the guy starts yelling). Since I was not on soak duty, I simply macroed Barkskin to my Mangle button to make sure it was up as often as possible. On a 5:58 try, my uptime on Barkskin was 74.6% and I was generally pretty low on the damage taken front. On one try, I misclicked and hit the Heroic Will early, and simply used my Survival Instincts to survive.

Mangle spam sucks on this fight and I was generally towards the bottom on dps. My best try was 28k. If I had a stronger bench I would have sat myself if it would have gotten us a kill. I was able to improve my dps as we practiced the fight. For clicking, I generally hit the button at 1.8 seconds. On 25 man the last minute of the fight has terrible lag issues and I clicked at about 3 seconds just in case (given the 45 second timer, this only happens a couple of times). I will try zooming my camera in per Qbear's suggestion on his video of the fight.

I am not sure why some guilds are making the fight more complex by using soakers other than the tanks plus one rogue. While a combat rogue with more than 150k life can be a soaker, the subtlety rogue had 3 points in Enveloping Shadows which provides a 30% passive reduction in AOE damage. Together with the feint, he only takes 35% of the damage or 105k. It took him a few tries to get comfortable with the Subtlety rotation, but his dps came up quickly and was competitive with the combat spec'ed rogue.

Now for a little rant on 10 man vs. 25 man. We did not get this fight down on 25 man last night, despite having the raid mostly intact for tries that lasted 5:44, 5:49, 5:57 and 5:58. The last try (5:58) was a 1.6% wipe. We simply could not generate enough consistent raid dps. We have added a lot of players to our team recently, and not everyone is fully decked out in heroic gear, so our dps will be coming up substantially every week. After the 5:58 attempt, we stacked a 10 man team and killed Ultraxion in 4:56. The players in there were stunned at how much of a joke 10 man was compared to 25 man. For 10 man we simply had the warrior tank eat all of the Hour of Twilights.

I want to continue to raid 25 man, but at times it is a struggle when I know how much easier it is to progress in 10 man. Blizzard has really stacked the deck in favor of 10 man raiding for those who are not hard core.

[Caireann]

- can anyone confirm that its 2 crystals (healer buffs) per colour on 25 man.

Yes, it's two crystals per each colour, and that means there's a place for 6 healers.

From what I've read on healing forums, the priority to crystals looks as follows, more or less:
red - druids, shamans
green - paladins
blue - holy, disco priests, shamans

There's no agreement to where shammies can squeeze the most, they benefit nicely both from red and blue ones and are not as limited as other classes when it comes to choice, so basically they take the colour depending on what's left. Holy priest PoH spam is insane on blue, disco doesn't benefit from red at all due to it not scaling with shields, druids have troubles with instants gcd on the blue hence the red, and pallies are cut to be on the green one (converting single target into aoe).

[Gladion]

I think we should all macro 'Heroic Will' with

/click ExtraActionButton1

just to be sure..

[Ephes]

Other important points from "http://www.icy-veins.com/ultraxion-detailed-strategy"

Thrall's Buff
At the start of the fight, Thrall will permanently buff all tanks with Last Defender of Azeroth. This reduces the cooldown of all their defensive cooldowns by 50% and increases their duration by 100%.

Alexstrasza, Ysera and Kalecgos' Buffs
The healing buffs (technically speaking, they are debuffs) are given to the raid with the following timings:

Gift of Life (red) is provided by Alexstrasza, about 1 and a half minutes into the encounter. It increases all healing done by 100%.

That this buff is most useful for:

- Restoration Druids
- Restoration Shamans
- Holy Priests

Essence of Dreams (green) is provided by Ysera, about 2 and a half minutes into the encounter. It causes each heal cast by the player to also heal the entire raid for the same amount (the healing done to the raid is split evenly among all raid members).

Source of Magic (blue) is provided by Kalecgos, about 3 and a half minutes into the encounter. It reduces mana cost of all spells by 75% and increases spell haste by 100%.
When an aspect provides the raid with one of these buffs, corresponding crystals (2 in 25-man) are created on the platform at fixed locations. Healers, and only healers, have the ability to right-click a crystal and gain the corresponding buff.

Each healer can only gain a single one of these buffs. Each buff lasts until the end of the encounter. If the healer dies, the buff is lost and it cannot be regained (if the healer is resurrected in combat, the buff will not persist). In either difficulty setting, all healers should be benefitting from one buff by the end of the encounter.

Heroic Will Keybind

Heroic Will has a 5 second cooldown and has no resource cost. It is off the Global Cooldown and it can be used even while you are casting or channeling another spell. Using Heroic Will has no beneficial effects. It merely removes you from the Twilight Realm for 5 seconds (as we said, this is useful for avoiding certain mechanics). During those 5 seconds, you are unable to perform any action whatsoever (deal damage, heal or even move).

This ability can be keybound from the Key Bindings Menu (it is called ExtraActionButton1 and it is located in the Action Bar Functions section). The button may may not display properly (or at all) if you are using any action bar add-ons, although this does not affect the aforementioned key-binding's efficiency. Alternatively, you can use the following macro:

/click ExtraActionButton1
Clicking this macro (which, of course, can be keybound), has the same effect as clicking the Heroic Will button.

[Lithasola]

Thanks Arslan, altho those were in the link I posted already and I did ask people to read from the links as well as watch the video. It doesnt hurt to put a bit more emphasis on the important stuff

@ Sarri, I am intrigued by the 2 tanks + 1 rogue soaking idea might be woirthwhile trying that out, altho I worry a little about having both tanks take a big hit then one has to continue tanking the boss straight after Hour of Twilight. If healers dont get them back up to reasonable health fast enough they might go splat.

@ Daeg if you think you could do the soaking thing we should give it a few goes however I am not fond of sacrificing the DPS you do, I dont know how much it will effect you being in front of the boss I know from messing around on my little rogue it pretty much screws your rotation up. I already know its gonna mess up Elunara as well.