[10] Hardmodes

[Jasari]

I run a guild that focuses almost exclusively on 10mans due to time commitments outside of WoW. We're progressing quite nicely and will probably have Yogg-Saron down this week or next at which time we'll start focusing on hard modes.

From what I've read it sounds like 10man hard modes are noticeably easier than 25man hard modes, unlike the case of Sarth 3D, which I think is a good thing, since we won't need 25man gear to have a shot at 10man hardmodes.

So my question is what fights would you recommend focusing on first?

I've heard Thorim is one of the easier hard modes, and the 3min Hodir doesn't look too difficult, I think we've gotten him down in just over 4min on our 2nd kill with 3 healers.

What do you guys think? And any recommendations on number of healers to bring, DPS requirements, etc would be great.

[mosa]

We have been doing Iron Council hard more since week two, (and obv FL) I just tank both runemaster and steelbreaker at the start... don't miss a fusion punch or let them stand in a rune though or you will get instaowned. Defiantly took me some wipes to get that to perfection. Thorim starts to hit like a truck hard mode... havn't had as much success with that as I would liked. We went from downing hodir 2:49 when the achevment was 2 min to last week failing on it as well, with the changes to things it better drop this week. I also want to put some attempts into Hard Freya +1 tonight as well. Xt002, we found killing the sparks was taking to much time and we weren't getting enough time on the boss... were going to revisit it in a week or two once our dps gets a little stronger.

[inthedrops]

I can't suggest which ones to do as I think it depends on your raid strengths and weaknesses and makeup.

But what I can suggest is that you actually sit down and make a plan ahead of time based on what you think you'll have to raid with. Have a plan for each boss as well as a backup plan in case it's clear you can't do it, etc. You'll get a lot more done quicker than if you get to each boss one by one before deciding what to do.

[Jasari]

We have been doing Iron Council hard more since week two, (and obv FL) I just tank both runemaster and steelbreaker at the start... don't miss a fusion punch or let them stand in a rune though or you will get instaowned. Defiantly took me some wipes to get that to perfection. Thorim starts to hit like a truck hard mode... havn't had as much success with that as I would liked. We went from downing hodir 2:49 when the achevment was 2 min to last week failing on it as well, with the changes to things it better drop this week. I also want to put some attempts into Hard Freya +1 tonight as well. Xt002, we found killing the sparks was taking to much time and we weren't getting enough time on the boss... were going to revisit it in a week or two once our dps gets a little stronger.

What kill order do you use, and don't you need a 2nd tank for when you die from meltdown?

I can't suggest which ones to do as I think it depends on your raid strengths and weaknesses and makeup.

I'd say our raid DPS is very strong. Biggest weakness is lack of tanks... I'm the only main spec tank in the guild since our other tank quit right after Ulduar came out. We still manage thanks to off specs and alts, but fights requiring two geared tanks would probably be the hardest thing for us. We also have no warlocks in the guild, which is annoying just because SS are nice.

[Splug]

We have been doing Iron Council hard more since week two, (and obv FL) I just tank both runemaster and steelbreaker at the start... don't miss a fusion punch or let them stand in a rune though or you will get instaowned. Defiantly took me some wipes to get that to perfection. Thorim starts to hit like a truck hard mode... havn't had as much success with that as I would liked. We went from downing hodir 2:49 when the achevment was 2 min to last week failing on it as well, with the changes to things it better drop this week. I also want to put some attempts into Hard Freya +1 tonight as well. Xt002, we found killing the sparks was taking to much time and we weren't getting enough time on the boss... were going to revisit it in a week or two once our dps gets a little stronger.

What kill order do you use, and don't you need a 2nd tank for when you die from meltdown?

There's two ways to do council-10. The one-tank option is to leave the stormcaller untanked in the corner, and have dps just stunlock and zerg him first. Once he's dead, work Runemaster Molgiem down to about 5-10%, and wait for a rune of power to drop. Once that goes off, ensure it's not overlapping a rune of death and kill him. Then just tank Steelbreaker close enough to the rune for melee to stand in it without steelbreaker getting it (doable, but tricky) and have healers stand at range to soak the disruptions. You'll meet the damage component easily. This method makes the damage component of P3 essentially a non-issue, but makes P2 significantly more difficult and probably requires a third healer.

The alternative is to have an offtank grab Molgiem while the MT grabs Steelbreaker, and just let the stormcaller sit in the corner and fire off chain lightning. Kill Molgiem, then the OT grabs the stormcaller while damage kills him, making sure to interrupt lightning whirl. Once he's dead, zerg out Steelbreaker and have the offtank taunt him at about 5 seconds remaining on the overwhelming power debuff. You should have Steelbreaker dead before the second tank detonates. If you have a soulstone or rebirth available, you can plan for that to be on the main tank after he detonates to give you a bit more damage, or to taunt the boss back and resume tanking - this will give you two players with overwhelming power's damage increase, and you were going to wipe after the second tank explodes anyway so it doesn't hurt your potential timeframe either. The advantage to this strategy is a significantly easier phase 2, but the damage for the end of phase 3 will be fairly high on the tank and probably requires the use of some cooldowns to last through. It also requires either two well-equipped tanks, or a well-equipped tank and a combat raise/soulstone. I personally prefer this method.

-Splug

[Belloc]

My group has done iron council, hodir, and thorim on hard modes (plus FL+3 and Freya+1).

Iron Council isn't bad at all. We run 2 tanks (both paladins), 2 healers, 6 DPS. We kill runemaster first, stormcaller second, and then steelbreaker last. Put a healing debuff up on Steelbreaker before the first tank dies, switch tanks, kill him before the second one dies. His targeted aoe prefers ranged targets, so keep most of your raid in melee range and you can control the damage. Also, remember that the tank blows up when the debuff expires, which will kill people nearby. So have the second tank taunt and the first tank move out right before death.

Thorim is harder, but not really bad. Getting to Thorim in 3 minutes shouldn't be a problem for you at all, so I won't go over that. Unbalancing strike has been hotfixed to be more... consistent, so that shouldn't be an issue, either. What will be an issue is the raid damage. Throw up a frost aura, spread everyone out, move from the lighting blasts, and pump out massive quantities of DPS.

Hodir is easy, as you already know. Bring your high dps players, teach them to stand in the lights, by the fires, and to spread the crit buff. We did this with two healers (and, obviously, only one tank), but it is doable with one.

XT-002's hard-mode requires a lot of DPS and coordination. Save this one for later.

Mimiron's hard-mode enables a ton of fires on the ground in his room, severely limiting the area in which to move. These fires chase players, which is a bad thing, but also makes them somewhat controllable (kite them to a doorway during phase transitions). There may be a new ability or two besides the fire, but I can't say for sure. Ultimately, every player will need to be able to avoid mines and shock blasts, since the fires will often force your ranged into melee range. Oh, and the damage increase really hurts on the MT in phase 1. If your group has excellent situational awareness, give it a few tries.

Freya+1 (ironbranch) is so easy that we one-shotted it while accidentally aggroing Freya while we were still killing trash. Ironbranch grants her the iron roots ability (which needs to be killed quickly), along with the health and damage increases. The first elder gives her a ground tremor ability, which does damage and interrupts spell casting. Brightleaf gives her a flare ability that hits people that are affected by the light buff? I don't know, just guessing from the wowhead descriptions.



Iron Council is probably the easiest hard mode, Hodir the second, Thorim the third, Freya/Flame Leviathan (if you know the strat) the fourth, XT-002 the fifth, Mimiron the 6th. I won't say anything about Yogg or Vezax. You'll start needing some excellent gear (as in, nearing full ulduar10) and a ton of skill from Freya onwards. If you want to know the Flame Leviathan strategy, send me a private message here.

[Splug]

It took us about two hours to do Vezax hard. It's not as bad as it sounds on 10.

-Splug

[PsiVen]

If you go through Yogg normal mode with everything dead up top regularly and lots of time with nothing to do, you're ready for 2-watchers (Thorim and Freya helping).

Vezax is a bit of a pain, since a group considering it will find the fight very easy and boring for several minutes and then wipe 15 seconds into the hard part, repeatedly. But once you get it down it's not too bad.

XT (Heartbreaker) is quite a strict DPS timer for such a long fight, especially since you will need 3 healers and probably 2 tanks. I'd leave that one for late.

Mimiron (Firefighter) we haven't tried yet, but looks to really be a brutal fight for melee.

Thorim hardmode isn't too bad at all, just have a 3rd healer DPSing in phase 1. The raid damage is easily avoided in 10-man so the healers can focus on the tanks.

Freya+3 is rough, demands a good amount of coordination to keep up with the DPS and healing.

Hodir should be no sweat, just drop to 2 healers and 1 tank and spread those Storm Cloud buffs around.

Auriaya has a couple of "hard mode" achievements that are just for fun. Crazy Cat Lady is a DPS race (which can be made trivial by tank swaps) and Nine Lives is a very long, boring, easy version of the fight where 90% of your time is spent waiting for the cat to respawn so you can kill it in 5 seconds again.

Kologarn achievements are fun as well. Kill him with both arms, easy enough but you have to coordinate it a little. Kill him with no arms, you'll have to be fast on the switch to free people from the grip without pushing the arm over, and eventually you have to stop switching entirely. Kill him with 25 Rubbles, that one was fun, try to get the last two arms dead together so you don't have to OT 20 of them at once. You can actually do this WITH Disarmed, but make sure to kill the body last and not trigger its death with one of the arms.

Steelbreaker is surprisingly easy, and there are multiple quite viable strategies as long as you have Heroism/Bloodlust:
3 healers and 2 tanks killing Runemaster first - Easiest to execute, doesn't demand too much from anyone.
3 healers and 2 tanks killing Stormcaller first - Almost as easy and the Runemaster one, but gives you even more DPS to work with in the power rune.
3 healers and 1 tank killing Runemaster first - Requires excellent DPS, but easy to execute all around.
2 healers and 2 tanks killing Runemaster first - Same as 2/1, but you have insurance if some DPS got killed early or your healers are excellent and your DPS not so much.
2 healers and 1 tank killing Runemaster first - Requires good interrupts and healing, decent DPS should be able to take him down easily before the tank dies.
2 healers and 2 tanks killing Stormcaller first - Probably a little rough on healers, assuming you use the rune, but plenty of leeway for the DPS.
3 healers and 1 tank killing Stormcaller first - Pretty dangerous, fast kill though.
2 healers and 1 tank killing Stormcaller first - The most dangerous strategy all around, but you'll certainly kill him in record time.

[Belloc]

XT-002's hard mode can be done with 1 tank and 2 healers, btw.

[Seloei]

XT-002 hard mode is 50% dps check, 40% positioning/coordination, 10% execution on 10 man atleast.
Had one night only on him but we got him down to 40% on the best try before he berserked, that was on the first few weeks. After that got a lot of stuff to do at work and my "co-raidleader" found that he cba with any hardmodes and broke up the 10 man group to form a badge/alt-gear farming 10 man group while i was absent.

Main thing we found was : If you tank him between the two camps and use a mainly caster group you can have the casters move forward towards the tank if they have the light bomb and you just hit the macro /tar light /cast hand of reckoning. The spark will 'slowly' start to towards you while 3 of the dedicated ranged burn it down. It used to have just 100k health on 10 man. Due to the taunt it came quite close to me but when it ran out it went towards the ranged who were nuking it, before it reached them it was dead.
If any of the ranged got gravity bomb they turned round and ran out of the raid behind them. They weren't hugging each other in a group, but moderately spread out so that the first ticks from light spark wont hit more than 2 at best.

We ran with 1 tank, 3 healers and 6 dps. Altho now after the tantrum nerf you can probably do it with just 2 healers, if their good but before, Tantrum consistently got someone if they weren't topped off and healed ASAP

[PsiVen]

XT-002's hard mode can be done with 1 tank and 2 healers, btw.

Depends on the group composition. For ours it was a DPS gain to tank the sparks and more reliable to add a tank than have the MT pick them up. I guess you could 2-heal it with AoE healers but one of ours was a paladin and whenever one of the other healers died, the next tantrum would always kill a DPS.

[Faro]

Hard modes you can do out of the gate are pretty well covered here; Thorim, Hodir and Iron council. FL is a good way to work on your raid's coordination (anything but hodir+freya tower takes ~10 minutes to get adjusted to.) Freya+one or two is also a good way to start out, depending on your raid's weak points you can do this with three healers and one tank or two tanks two healers. Brightleaf and Ironbranch are a good pair to start with if your ranged dps is on the ball for roots and your tank is good at moving during a photosynthesis cast. If your healers are carrying your raid then Brightleaf and Stonebark would be the easier two.

An Iron Council hard mode strat that I didn't see up here was having a dps dk with his PvP Icebound Fortitude glyph taunt before meltdown then you taunt back. His numbers get pretty stupid.

I tried Yogg-Saron with Mimiron on the bench and a brain dead healer but we managed to rock it out pretty hard, I recommend benching Hodir if your group isn't paladin/shaman heavy.

The aforementioned healer made it so we couldn't get a legit gauge of how hard Firefighter is, but it's definitely one of the harder hardest hard modes.

[loeni]

XT-002's hard mode can be done with 1 tank and 2 healers, btw.

Depends on the group composition. For ours it was a DPS gain to tank the sparks and more reliable to add a tank than have the MT pick them up. I guess you could 2-heal it with AoE healers but one of ours was a paladin and whenever one of the other healers died, the next tantrum would always kill a DPS.

We just dedicated an ele shaman to burning them down whenever they spawned, who also tanked them while he burned them, with a holy pally and a disc priest on heals.

[Spectrum]

Some nice info here. I'd push our group to work on these if we weren't down two regulars already. Going to need everyone to be on the ball for hard modes.

[moduspwnens]

XT-002's hard mode can be done with 1 tank and 2 healers, btw.

Depends on the group composition. For ours it was a DPS gain to tank the sparks and more reliable to add a tank than have the MT pick them up. I guess you could 2-heal it with AoE healers but one of ours was a paladin and whenever one of the other healers died, the next tantrum would always kill a DPS.

My group (wasn't anywhere near ideal) did this with me tanking and a Paladin and Priest healing. We ended up just having everyone basically "behind" the boss. Then they'd drop the gravity bombs (with void zones) on one side and the light bombs (and adds) on the other side. If you just save your Exorcism and HoReck and make a quick macro, you can pick up the adds quite easily. Also keep in mind that this is about all you have to do. Even if a ranged pulls aggro, it'll be dead long before it reaches him.