I come back and first thing I do is get the dual spec. I love it. In Naxx last weekend, I swapped out protection/fury several times. Great.
My fears over the nerf to titan's grip, though have been realized. I'm seriously considering building and using Arms for my dps spec, which will be all at once cheaper and better, according to comparisons to the warrior we have in our 10 man raid that went arms right away.
My average dps is now topping out at about 2700 (bumps up to 3100 occasionally), about 300-400 less than I was doing, and about 800-1200 less than all the other classes in my raids.
I expect that it won't be long before we experience a mass exodus of Fury warriors, since raids don't invite us along for our good looks.
But on a happier note: My first trip into Ulduar, and I hear all these horror stories, and it's almost pop pop pop, Flame Leviathon, Razorscale, and XT all go down. Mind you we don't even start raiding until nearly 9:00pm my time, and I work Friday mornings too, so I don't even stay up late. From what my group said though, the week I was gone they couldn't do more than the first two and it took them Thursday and all day Sunday to get that far. Having never done "semi-unknown" content before, I couldn't relate, but now I do. We tried a few times to take down Ignis, but had better luck on Sunday when we were fresh. So now the first 4 bosses are down, 2 achievements and we've gotten REALLY close on Iron Council. One more try this week, I hope.
So from a warriors perspective (after one run through part of Ulduar) here's my tips for the 4 bosses we managed to take down:
1st) Flame Leviathon. I was "dps" for this. I started out in the turret of a siege engine and switched to a Chopper for the boss fight. This fight is a blast. Basically, as a chopper you have 3 jobs:
(1) speed in front of him and throw out the tar
(2) try to hit the guy with your sonic thing when you can
(3) when group members get catapaulted onto FL, you pick them up, heal them and take them back to their vehicles.
2nd) Razorscale. I was dps for this fight too. I've read this same thing other places, but essentially, since she goes in phases, during the air phase you go after the adds like crazy, and watch out for the blue fireballs. There are also blue and orange fireballs, but while these cause damage, they don't leave a burning blue spot on the ground like the blue ones do. During the ground phase, ignore the adds and burn the boss. That's pretty much it from a dps perspective.
3rd) XT. This one took most of our tries the first night. we 1 shot FL and 2 shot Razorscale, but XT took about 3-5 tries. I have two tips that made our job easier:
(1) There are two groups of adds "INSIDE" the chamber that need to be cleared before you start. They are standing ON the same piles of rubble that the other adds spawn from. They will not aggro the boss. I understand Blizz fixed an issue that caused both of these groups to aggro simultaneously, which is good, but make sure you do them before you start.
(2) Burn boss, ranged will hit bomb things to kill as many adds as possible.
(3) when heart drops at 75%, burn it fast
(4) Burn boss to 50%
(5) when heart drops a second time, take care of whatever adds you can, then go back and do as much dps on the heart as possible.
(6) Burn boss to 25%
(7) when heart drops this time, burn it quick so you can almost kill him once he reactivates, and then take care of the last 1-2%.
4.) Ignis. So the first night we tried this about 2-3 times before calling it, and then went back to do it Sunday. Ok, what can I say, this guy is kind of hectic. I was the add tank for this fight. So basically, while everyone else burned the boss, my job was the constructs. Here's how that works well.
(1) he'll activate these guys pretty frequently. You can tank more than one, but don't let them wander into the group as once they become molten they do aoe damage. Note: Ignis says something like "RISE MY SOLDIERS" each time he activates a construct.
(2) I REALLY tried to find a good way to stand so that the construct is IN the fire and I'm OUT of it, but it never seemed to work right. Basically, it worked best when I just kited them right into the fire and stood until they became molten. Here is where Vent comes in handy. Call out to let the ranged dps know that you have a molten construct and run him into the fountain. You only need to go into the shallow part, not the deep part, so just lead them in and you run right back out.
(3) the hardest part about this is SEEING the constructs. This encounter is probably a LOT easier in 25 man because each add tank can grab constructs on one side of Ignis or the other so they don't have to keep looking around Ignis to find the construct that just spawned.
(4) Heals are the biggest challenge here. Your group will likely want 3 healers for this encounter, even in 10 man. One for the MT, one for OT and raid and one for the Mush Pot (slag pot, whatever) who can toss raid heals in between slag pots.
5.) Iron Council. So once Ignis went down (and it took another 5 tries Sunday) we went in and tried the Iron Assembly. Our group tried a few things and we came up with this strat that seemed to "almost" get us there. (2 down, only the last one to go, but he wiped us due to an unfortunate healer shot). Note: we did what is understood as the "easy" mode - Largest to smallest in kill order.
(*) IF you can spare it, go ahead and have 3 tanks, and 3 healers for this until everyone gets used to things. Have the main tank take the first guy to go down, and have the two other tanks grab each of the other two guys.
(*) IF you're doing it in the same order here's the way it goes:
(*) One healer will stay on the MT, make sure someone can remove the debuff the first guy puts on him IMMEDIATELY.
(*) One healer will stay on the first OT (the Medium size guy) and must remove the self Buff that that guy puts on himself IMMEDIATELY. The rest of the time that healer can raid heal some.
(*) One healer will be strictly raid heals and will occasionally glance in the direction of the second OT (the small guy, who hits like the little blood elf girl orphan I'm going to be chauffering around next week). Any warrior worth his salt should be able to handle this guy since he is BOTH interruptible AND stunnable. What a combination for a boss. The ONLY trick to this guy is that he WILL NOT MOVE unless he's silenced, so you'd better have taken gag order or you're up a tree right from the start. This guy needs to be tanked as far away from the raid as possible because he does an uninterruptible aoe blast that HURTS, but it's really slow and he has a recording of Sartherion (from Obsidian Sanctum) that he plays really loud right before he does it. "RUN AWAY LITTLE GIRL!!!!" It's not as intimidating coming from a munchkin.
(*) So obviously this was my guy.
(*) To draw him off to the other side of the room, run in and use Heroic Throw (because you have gag order this will silence him for 3 secs and that's how long you have to position him. If you need more time, hit him with a shield bash and move him again.) Once you have him in place, unless he's screaming at you to RUN, you want to cycle through something like: "Oh, you're doing something -- concussion blow. Oh, you're back up and doing something else? -- Shockwave. Oh, you're moving and doing something else? -- Revenge (because you took improved revenge, right?) Oh you're doing something else? -- shield bash. Oh you're doing something else? -- Heroic Throw." and by now your shield bash or shockwave and/or revenge should be up again. Rinse repeat. There are only two things to consider:
(*) if you can avoid using your Heroic Throw to stop him casting, save it for those OH $#!+ moments. Reason is, once the first guy goes down, the medium guy will start casting "rune of death" underneath someone, and even you will have to turn and run out. Now, to effectively tank this small fry, you need him to come with you. Of course, the rune of death makes getting into melee range of him (if your shield bash was on cd when it happened) will be practically suicide, so that's when you want to use your Heroic Throw.
(*) In a pinch, charge can be your friend. If shockwave, shield bash, concussion blow et al are on cooldown, don't forget that your little friend isn't going anywhere while he casts so a quick back off and charge could interrupt him nicely. It's certainly what you should use after you "RUN AWAY, LITTLE GIRL!!!" because you'll have to close back on him before he starts casting his next spell.
The first few times we tried Iron Council we did it with 2 tanks, and I have to say that once everyone is really familiar with this fight, that's probably doable, but the Medium guy hits too hard with his cool red sphere buff up for you to take it much, so if you do one add tank, you're going to need a dedicated healer to that tank who can remove the Buff from medium guy.
I expect we may be able to take these guys down this week, so if we do I'll let you know how things went.
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