Unbearably HoT

There’s nothing better than stomping the Iron Council into the ground and trekking back up the staircases to see a giant Titan dude emerge from the depths of Ulduar. If you haven’t seen him yet, Kologarn is so big that you actually only get to hit his regenerating arms and his giant-ass torso. For most folks, the strat is ridiculously simple—keeping everyone alive makes the encounter difficult. As always, having stellar DPS is an absolute must; however, there is no possible way to DPS any part of Kologarn from behind. What does this mean, kittens? No Shred. This is a Problem. Although Primal Gore boosts our Rip damage enough to keep us mostly viable for this fight, the sad reality is that you will be losing approximately 25% of your normal raid DPS (depending on the idol you use) here.

Fortunately, I had ample time last night to test out a variety of things in a patently unscientific manner to determine the best ways to make the most of your frontal DPS.

For what I did, you need this shit:

1. 6.5% chance not to be dodged or parried. This is the soft expertise cap, and it’s CRUCIAL because you’re unable to stand behind the boss.  Being hit capped or close to hit capped is also important.
2. Elixir of Mighty Fortitude. EXCITING! This is only because you need a guardian elixir and it’s really the only choice.
3. Elixir of Lightning Speed. I realize that this is surprising.
4. A stack of Imperial Manta Steaks (40 Haste) or, if you’re not Expertise Capped, a stack of Rhinolicious Wyrmsteaks (40 Expertise). I used Haste food, because I’m just below the soft Expertise cap.
5. Idol of Worship. This serves to maximize your DoT damage, which is essentially the only thing you’ve really got going for you. Especially useful because your DoTs will still be ticking when you inevitably have to kite an Eye Beam or become a victim of Stone Grip.
6. Potion of Speed. Unless you really fail and will absolutely need a health pot.
7. 5/5 Feral Aggression. You want the extra Bite damage.

These buffs will also help tremendously:

1. Improved Icy Talons. This can boost your Haste (if you happen to be lucky enough to be with your DK pal) by 20% for 20 seconds.
2. Windfury Totem. No DK? Windfury Totems are still pretty awesome and provide 16% Haste.
3. Heroism. This is pretty self-explanatory, I believe.

The idea is to increase your melee Haste and boost your white damage—your auto attacks. The more auto-attacks you do, the greater chance you have to proc your Clearcasting ability. But hey, we can’t Shred! Why bother? Although you will ultimately have so many Clearcast procs that you won’t know what to do with yourself, here’s how how you can use up all that Energy:

1. Mangle spam. No joke. You’ll (mostly) be using Mangle to build combo points.
2. Savage Roar for four combo points. To start your rotation here, SR at two combo points.
3. Keep up Rake. But don’t clip it. Refresh this only when it’s about to run out.
4. Keep up Rip at five combo points. Same rules apply. Don’t clip your DoT here because you’re only going to lose out on damage. Refresh this only when it’s about to run out.
5. Ferocious Bite like it’s your goddamn job. You will OFTEN have five combo points and seemingly nothing to do with them. Use that to your advantage.
6. Use Tiger’s Fury and Berserk as appropriate.

So why does this work so well? I am also running at a flat, unbuffed 265 Haste Rating, which many of you other cats in similar gear may have. With onlythe Elixir of Lightning Speed and Imperial Manta Steaks, I’m bumped up to 350. I’m also gemmed for Armor Penetration and run with approximately 197 ArP unbuffed. If you count Grim Toll’s proc in there, that’s more like 809. When you combine the strategy outlined above (that has an emphasis on boosting physical damage done) with a significant armor reduction, now we’re talking.

Questions? Good luck with Kologarn!

Now that the days of so-called “utility” classes are over and hybrids should be doing nearly as much (if not the same) amount of damage as pure DPS classes, it’s time to start thinking like a pure DPS class. Have you taken a talent that doesn’t amplify your damage? Does that talent greatly increase the damage of the raid group? No? Skip it. You want to start every rotation hearing that dude from Crysis saying “MAXIMUM STRENGTH” in your head.

The 0/55/16 build effectively gives you all of the high-damage tools you need to rock out and omits any sort of general survivability. You can arguably move a few points around to customize your build to do exactly what you want to (ex. drop Improved Leader of the Pack for Feral Instinct). If you’re exceptionally concerned about Swipe damage on trash, you can make a macro like the one below to give you a little more of an edge and bind it to your Swipe button:

/#showtooltip Swipe (Cat)

/equipslot 18 Idol of Perspicacious Attacks

/startattack

/cast Swipe (Cat)

And then switch back by binding your other idol of choice to an ability you primarily associate with single target damage, such a Shred:

/#showtooltip Shred

/equipslot 18 Idol of Massive Boners

/startattack

/cast Shred

Notable DPS talents that have changed substantially:

• Heart of the Wild. The DPS part of this talent hasn’t changed; however, 5/5 Heart of the Wild will only give you a 10% STA boost in Dire Bear form now, meaning that if you decide to be a total retard and pull aggro during a trash pack, going Bear and hoping for the best will make you a squishier target than you remember.
• Rend and Tear. The FB critical strike bonus has been reduced down to 25% from 50%. This may diminish the effectiveness of working FB into a regular rotation; however, using the Idol of the Ravenous Beast while stacking at least 200 Armor Penetration may prove to bump up the usefulness of FB beyond DPS simulations. To that end, this build also maxes out Feral Aggression.
• Primal Gore. Completely new. Although this talent now only boosts our Rip and Lacerate DoT damage (rather than Rake as well), it is a substantial damage multiplier. Have the Idol of Worship? You won’t be disappointed.
• Improved Mark of the Wild. If you didn’t already have this worked into your build, you should. 2/2 IMotW now acts like a baked-in Blessing of Kings and increases all of your total attributes by 2%.

Glyphs to have on hand (once they’re available):

• Glyph of Savage Roar
• Glyph of Shred
• Glyph of Berserk
• Glyph of Rip
• Glyph of Mangle

I never had the opportunity to test Glyph of Berserk, although I tend to think that you’d be better off with Glyph of Savage Roar (a veritable no-brainer), Glyph of Rip, and Glyph of Mangle. Obviously, if you have some other form of manglebot available (like a Bear tank or a Warrior with Trauma), you won’t be using Mangle and can substitute that Glyph for something else. 

All other talent choices should be self-explanatory. Questions? Drop me a line.

When everyone starts talking about the new bosses in Ulduar, I can’t help getting a little excited about the XT-002 Deconstructor—and it’s not just because he drops Twisted Visage. I remember Doomwalker’s ominous voice with peculiar longing, and I’m not sure anyone can resist watching Void Reaver rev his invisible motorcycle. Nothing gets my pistons pumping like giant robots, and I don’t think the Deconstructor will disappoint. The Deconstructor goes back up for testing on the PTR next Tuesday, and I’ve attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of the the Deconstructor’s abilities and offer general strategic information. This information is based on previous PTR testing and is thus subject to change dramatically.

OVERVIEW

XT-002 lurks at the back of a long, rectangular room and seems to be doing some sort of mech-calisthenics when you open the door. I guess I’d be pretty pissed if a bunch of mouth-breathers dropped in on me during my private exercise session, and he reacts accordingly. The main tank pulls Mr. Roboto and tanks him where he stands, just barely pulled back up onto the stairs (although I’ve also seen him pulled back to the room’s entrance). As the raid enters the room, spread out—the Deconstructor will randomly target any raid member and drop a Light Bomb on him or her. This debuff does approximately 2,500 damage per second to any target within 10 yards, so the idea is to get your sorry ass to 11 and eliminate any chance of splash damage. We’ve seen this mechanic on bosses from C’thun to Illidan to Kel’thuzad, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise now. Don’t stand in the fire, don’t BE the fire, and turn on your range checker.

While thoroughly trashing the tank, XT-002 will choose another random target and cast Gravity Bomb. This is another range-sensitive ability that necessitates the Gravity Bomb haul ass out of the raid (think THE LIVING BOMB). After nine seconds, the target explodes and creates a Gravity Well. If the Gravity Well is within 10 yards of any other player, those players will be sucked into the well and crushed for approximately 19,000 damage. Clearly, this is not optimal. As a DPS Druid (or any Druid pressed for time, for that matter), you can hit up Dash and peace out pretty quickly (as if your already increased movement speed isn’t enough). If you happen to be tanking, you don’t have to worry about either of these spells (unless melee is giving you splash damage).

The Deconstructor will periodically cast Tympanic Tantrum: a 2 second spellcast that nukes the entire raid for 10% damage every 1 second for 12 seconds. It also applies an AOE daze effect, making it more difficult for bomb targets to move into and out of the raid. Everyone will be taking damage. Resto Druids make particularly good use of Wild Growth, here, and stacking other AOE healers such as Holy Priests and Shamans makes this portion of the fight mostly trivial. Don’t worry though—Paladins and Discipline Priests still form important components of the 25-man raid group for both buffs and superior single-target healing. It’s a smart idea to dedicate your Paladin or Priest to the main tank so that you ensure consistent tank healing during the Tympanic Tantrum phases. For all you trees out there, it’s well worth watching who’s been target with a bomb before the Deconstructor casts Tympanic Tantrum. The bomb target will take an enormous amount of damage very quickly, and a well-timed HoT could mean the difference between dangerously low health and a dirt bath (a good time for Survival Instincts, if you’re me). 

But it can’t stay that easy the entire fight, right? At 75%, 50%, and 25%, XT-002 spawns a series of adds from the corner scrap heaps that need to be destroyed immediately before DPS can return to the boss.

• XM-024 Pummeler: Melee mob with a “frontal Arcing Smash, a Trample, and Uppercut.” Can be tanked, and has the most hit points of all the bots.
• XE-321 Boombot: What does it sound like? This blows up. Everything. You, other bots, you name it. 12-13k damage within a 20 yard range.
• XS-013 Scrapbot: Zombie Chow. If you let this reach the Deconstructor, it will heal him for a fixed percentage. Has the fewest hit points of all the bots.

Right now, these mobs can all be Death Gripped and pulled back into the raid to be AOE’d to death or be picked up by a designated off-tank. I recommend focusing damage on the Scrapbots  while letting an off-tank dick around with the Pummelers. Feral Druids are in a unique position, because even without the ease of dual-specs, a Cat can still stop damage and tank (and admittedly take more damage) and a Bear can still do reasonable damage and then head back to pick up the bots. To be fair, however, this off-tanking job could likely be accomplished very similarly by a DPS Warrior with a shield or a Death Knight using Frost Presence. If you do this rather than stack an additional “fully Prot” tank, you can maximize your overall damage done. Ranged DPS must focus-fire the Boombots, unless the healers are bored and the melee have a collective death wish. 

While all this is going on, the Deconstructor simultaneously shits out an “Energy Orb” that moves toward a random corner of the room. If you have your ranged DPS focus on the “Energy Orb” and bring it down to 50%, the orb will explode, reducing everyone’s HP by half within 20 yards (this is why I say RANGED DPS; I’m looking at YOU, Boomkin). This major explosionkapow also decimates any adds nearby, which means that if you can finagle the bots into the 20 yard radius of the moving orb, you can focus DPS on the orb rather than each individual bot—and then play clean-up. Handy, m I rite?

This fight is essentially a rinse and repeat show, and judging from some of the feedback on the forums, isn’t all that difficult so long as you’re playing it smart and ensuring you’ll make the 10 minute enrage timer. If you were to hit the enrage at exactly 10 minutes, this means putting out 29,750 total raid damage per second. Assuming seven-ish healers, one main tank, and one occasional offtank, this means that the other 16 DPS need to average 1859 DPS. That’s pathetic. More than likely, everyone will average higher than 3k. Sustaining 4k (which may not happen since you’ll be running around and killing adds) will average out at 64,000 raid damage per second. That’s pretty good. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. 

ABILITIES

• Tympanic Tantrum. Deals 10% damage every 1 sec for 12 sec. Nearby enemies are also dazed for the duration.
• Light Bomb. Deals 2500 damage every 1 sec. to all enemies within 10 yards of the caster for 9 seconds.
• Gravity Bomb. Charges the target with dark energy, causing them to explode and pull in nearby allies after 9 sec.  This triggers Gravity Well.
  • Gravity Well. Pulls enemies within 10 yards into a gravity well, dealing 19000 to 21000 damage. 

BREAKDOWN

1. Boss is engaged. Main tank brings the Deconstructor to the back of the room so that the scrap heaps are on either side and places his/her back to the wall. The raid spreads out so that there’s approximately 10 yards between each individual to minimize splash damage from Light Bomb and Gravity Bomb/Well.
2. Hard DPS as normal. Boss will periodically target a raid member for Light Bomb (AOE damage to others) and Gravity Bomb (initial damage and then a Gravity Well). Treat these individuals like Geddon’s “Living Bomb” and make sure that they exit the raid (ensuring 11 yards+ between other raid members).
3. Boss periodically casts Tympanic Tantrum which AOEs the entire raid (10% damage every second per 12 seconds) and dazes everyone. AOE healing is preferred.
4. At 75% (and every 25% thereafter), the boss spawns Pummelers, Boombots, and Scrapbots. He also conjurs an Energy Orb that moves toward the corner of the room. The Energy Orb may be taken to 50% where it will blow up and reduce everyone within 20 yards HP to half—and destroy all bots. Scrapbots cannot be allowed to reach the Deconstructor because they’ll heal him. Stay out of the way of the Boombots.
5. Once all adds have been destroyed, resume damage on XT-002.

Repeat steps 2-5 and collect loot.

HARD MODE OVERVIEW (because we like it hard, right?)

Every 25% (you know, when all the adds are spawning and there’s a big energy orb), XT-002 bares his heart to the raid—you can choose whether or not to break it. Right now there seems to be a bug in that only ranged DPS can hit the heart (2 million HP) unless you do some super positioning on the stairs and/or the ledge; I imagine this will be changed to prevent XTREEM ranged DPS stacking. After you kill the heart, XT-002 will be healed to full and initiates Dashboard Confessional mode: you break his heart, he increases damage and HP by 25%.

In addition, the Gravity Bomb targets now spawn Void Zones that hit folks for 7,500 damage, and the Light Bombs spawn Life Sparks that cannot be crowd controlled and deal 1,500 Nature Damage to anyone within 500 yards every 3 seconds. The rest of the fight proceeds as normal.

The clear difficulty indicator here is whether you kill the heart at 75%, 50%, or 25%—the longer you wait, the more staying power you need to get the job done within the 10 minute enrage timer.

ABILITIES

• Heartbreak. The heart of the XT-002 Deconstructor has been severed, removing the combat limitations of the XT-002 Deconstructor.  Damage increased by 25%. Health increased by 25%.
• Gravity Bomb: Spawns Void Zones. Summon a Void Zone that deals 7500 Shadow damage to enemies that stand within it. 
• Light Bomb: Spawns a Life Spark add every 15-30 seconds that can’t be crowd controlled, has 189k HP (Heroic) and casts Static Charged.
  • Static Charged. Deals 1500 Nature damage to all enemies within 500 yards every 3 sec. 

ADDITIONAL SOURCES

• Many YouTube videos.
• WoWWiki
• World of Raids
• StratFU
• WoW Dungeons & Raids Forums
• Wowhead’s PTR site
• Updates and additional information are welcomed.

As I was checking in with my RSS feed and browsing MMO’s latest fodder, Karthis happily informed me that they’d updated their Ulduar gear list and added a pretty awesome DPS staff: Twisted Visage. Supposedly this drops off Megatron in Heroic Ulduar and offers very competitive stats when compared to the previous victor: Lotrafen, Spear of the Damned. 

In fact, for anyone who hasn’t gotten lucky with Dawnwalkers, Belt of the Tortured, Tunic of Indulgence, or Leggings of the Honored, Twisted Visage offers a superior Hit Rating solution. If you’re already over-budget on Hit%, start setting your sights on Lotrafen for the boosted Armor Penetration. These totally sweet weapons almost make up for the tragedy that’s our Tier 8 armor set. 

On a more personal note, my focus will likely swing more toward Feral DPS in the near future rather than tanking because it’s what I’m going to be doing exclusively for awhile. 

Maybe you’re already a DPS mastermind and a veritable tanking genius. Everything you have is best-in-slot, you raid with the baddest cats on the planet, play on a custom-built machine that runs on Jesus, have committed every rotation to strict muscle memory—how can you possibly get any better? I contend that it’s possible to eke out a little extra damage by consolidating your interface. By stripping down to the bare essentials—without sacrificing looks—you can focus your attention to one portion of the screen and maximize the amount of information you can take in at once. This can improve your reaction time, expand your field-of-vision on the battlefield, enable you to make better decisions about your health before the warning the noise pings, monitor your threat and DPS simultaneously, and help you tighten your buff/debuff rotations on a boss encounter.

My UI hasn’t always been so svelte, and it’s still a work in progress. In the not-so-distant past, Phaelia almost asphyxiated after I e-mailed her a screenshot that happened to include my interface. It was like WoW Ace took a massive dump on my screen—and I wasn’t even using that many mods. Because I didn’t feel like fussing with details and had very little screen with which to work (having played on a laptop for years), I shoved whatever was absolutely necessary into every corner of the screen. Now, however, I’ve narrowed my focus by placing the most important elements just below eye-level. I liken this to my car: in the newest versions of the Honda Civic (circa 2006), the speedometer. fuel gauge, and thermometer are digital readouts set up and back in the dashboard. I thought it was particularly strange at first, but if I want to see how fast I’m going, I barely need to drop my eyes from the road and I’ve got instant information.

The way I see it, your UI should function the same way. You want to create a mostly unobstructed (see: BigWigs and SCT) field-of-vision with important bits like your player/target unit frames toward the bottom middle portions of your screen.

The “X” above is where I don’t want to see any extra crap, and I want my important mods consolidated at the bottom. Because I’m not healing and am generally not concerned with what’s going on my raid frames, I set them up on the lefthand side of my screen in such a fashion that they don’t interfere with “X.” The result is something a little like this:

I like this latest revision for the most part, although I’m starting to think that my unit frames are too bulky and I dislike the way that the buffs are wrapping beneath them. What you see here are my abilities consolidated below the targeting frames. In combat, the casting bar shows up directly beneath them, and all my NTK information will display as timers directly above. Recount is visible here, but I generally don’t have it shown if I’m only tanking. The minimap is still in the corner of the screen, albeit the bottom right, and it’s made to look as seamless as possible with the environment so that it’s not distracting.

Here’s where it gets a little crazy. I’m getting all my raid warnings exactly where I don’t want the information to be, and when coupled with my scrolling combat text, it makes things a little difficult to see. Now, what I’ve found since taking these screenshots are third-party plug-ins for BigWigs that allow you to customize your bar options.

I’ve since shrunk down the bars and moved them closer to my targeting windows. If you’re into it, you can change the textures to match all your other shit on screen (X-Perl, NTK, and Omen, for example).  I also accidentally moved Omen from it’s place to the left of my bag bars and it’s currently obstructing my minimap. Check out how things look out of combat with everything cleaned up a little:

When NeedToKnow timers pop up during combat, they center over my target of target unit frames. I’m thus able to keep my focus on my combo points and check my timers all at the same time, essentially without moving my eye. I’ve also got Recount sitting above my combat log/chat frame so I can figure out whether I’m slacking on damage (or if someone else is) and start pushing the envelope without being a moron.

If you haven’t checked it out already, Karthis from Of Teeth and Claws recently wrote-up a piece about his own UI. If you find any of the elements he uses intriguing, he provides a detailed explanation of each; however, while the heads-up display he’s rocking looks pretty cool, his interface is still a little too cluttered for my tastes. Just remember: do whatever works best for you.