Nature Resist and Uldar

[Rachmaninoff]

I'm at work right now and I can't think of the name of the boss, but I think its one of the Iron Council bosses that does a shit ton of nature dmg. obviously NR is going to be needed. but I can't find ANY NR gear. I've heard a NR set will be released for patch. Has anyone heard anything on this??

[Jasari]

Pretty sure the guilds that down Iron Council on the PTR didn't use any nature resist so I don't see why it's be required on live.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Worldie]

There is no craftable NR gear so i don't see NR gear beeing needed.

[Rachmaninoff]

Pretty sure the guilds that down Iron Council on the PTR didn't use any nature resist so I don't see why it's be required on live.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

alright, I figured as much, but one tank in my guild thinks there is a need for it.

[Mex]

Fusion punch is healable without NR, and easy with CDs. It will only be problematic when steelbreaker is killed last, in which case you can do tank swaps.

[pfunkmort]

I've actually been thinking about this as well. It's not just the council who does nature damage. Freya and all her buffs from her adds are nature. Mimiron has nature, I believe, as does the xt-002. But more importantly...almost all the bosses in Ulduar have some form of MAGIC damage - whether it's frost, fire, shadow, nature, etc.

As sort of a noobish tank who got dragged into our guild first kill of S3D25 as an adds tank, and trying to get through the Twilight Torments and still control like 5-6 fire blazes at a time, I got used to always flasking the lesser magic resistance (50 resist to all schools of magic) and having fire aura on.

I assume in Ulduar, rather than actually having gear for it, you're going to be switching it up for every fight. Have the base flask 50 resist as a tank, to all magic they throw at you, then use the druid nature resist (and shaman as well, I think?) for the nature fights, and paly auras intelligently used (don't forget those things have a max range, and if you need it as a tank, in specific occasions if you don't think your raid-buffing paly is going to be in range, sacrifice devo for the appropriate aura if necessary tanking) for the other stuff. With that, you should have a baseline resist to all the magic abilities used in a fight of like 100+, if not much more. That's big if those hits hit for like half your health (which they will). But with that baseline, unless there's some specific fight that's wiping your group over and over again, it's not worth taking the hit to your stats and itemization to shuffle in resist gear.

To the poster above who said it's fine and easy because some people cleared it...the people who cleared these bosses are like the best guilds in the game. It DOES prove that it's doable without any form of resist gear, but it doesn't mean it's easy - and while learning the fights, every little bit helps.

My 2 cents anyway. Hope it helped.

The only real caveat I'd throw is that I think it's thorim or hodir who has the "lessen defense rating by X amount for Y seconds"...for that fight, if you are set otherwise and don't have that old BC trinket that ups your def, you might consider a quick reflask to the def rating one.

[Worldie]

The only real caveat I'd throw is that I think it's thorim or hodir who has the "lessen defense rating by X amount for Y seconds"...for that fight, if you are set otherwise and don't have that old BC trinket that ups your def, you might consider a quick reflask to the def rating one.

You will hardly manage to get 700 defense anyway there to be honest unless you've done some retarded gearing/gemming.

[Mex]

It depends what we're talking about here -- passive NR buffs (shaman totem if you have 3 or more shamans, not worth losing WF / GoA), or gear. Gear is a bad idea because it gimps your stats. Most of the nature damage is RSTS or AoE, so you'd need the whole raid in it to see any real difference.

I don't think XT-002 has any nature damage. Light bomb is holy I believe. Kologarn's eye beam is nature but you don't want to get hit by it anyway. Same with any of Mimiron's abilities that are nature. The types of raid damage in Ulduar seem more geared towards avoidance through execution than brute force mitigation / resistance. Again, with Freya and her adds there's no need for NR.

It's not a question of good players "not needing" the NR. If the NR made those fights easier they'd most likely be using them. If they make them harder, then it's probably not worth bothering. The only time skill will factor into this is when you have abilities which can be avoided but which your raid is too bad to avoid. If you're wearing FR gear because you can't dodge flame walls (extreme example), then there are more fundamental problems to be addressed.

Also WotLK already has 2 trinkets with passive defense, no point going back to BC. Aside from that, Thorim (the one who debuffs defense by 200) hits for ~8k without any stacks of his buff, so a 16k isn't anything to worry about when other bosses melee for 25-30k already. When his stacks build up to 6 or so it might be a problem, but that's the point of the fight, killing him before they do get that high.

At the end of the day, FrR is the only WotLK level attainable resist gear. All the other resistance fights (Solarian, Mother, Illidan) have generally had craftable or badge resist gear made available for them. This in itself seems to be a hint, but yeah, there's simply not enough damage from specific schools floating around to make resistance seem worth it outside of Hodir.

[pfunkmort]

While I agree that you probably don't need the extra def for that fight, you might decide you can get enough extra to make it worth it - especially as that lowering of your def is also going to take you out of block cap range, and will lower your avoidance considerably. If I can find a couple pieces or flasks to make it work, bet your ascot I'm going to try to keep them on hand.

But yeah, OP, they're probably right ^. You can live without it.

But, if you WERE going to do something about it, I would say gimping your stats, as it was put, for resist gear, is usually a bad idea. And there are other solutions.

[Grehn|Skipjack]

passive NR buffs (shaman totem if you have 3 or more shamans, not worth losing WF / GoA), or gear.

Wat

[Mex]

There are two ways to obtain nature resist (NR). You can either sacrifice other stats for it with consumables / gear, OR you can get it through buffs which come at 0 opportunity cost (ie shaman totem or motw). What's confusing?

[Levantine]

He was pointing out the fact that Grace of Air totem doesn't exist any more.

And you're forgetting that Hunter's are the other class with a Nature Resist buff, not Druids.

[Mex]

GoA? Oh yar, WoA. I always got those two confused. In any event, you'd want those two.

Also for hunters it comes at the cost of AP or mana regen, so not worth it. Druids give it with motw, although that won't stack with totems.

I would have thought my point was clear, but if you want to nitpick acronyms then hopefully people have figured out what I'm saying.

[Levantine]

The Druid buff is 75 Resistance, Hunter and Shaman buffs are 130.

[Mex]

The Druid buff is 75 Resistance, Hunter and Shaman buffs are 130.

Yes ... so?