[10] Need help for Kologarn

[Sophotrates]

Yesterday we went in Ulduar for the second time and killed 4 bosses of the Siege relatively easy, but after that we wiped like 8+ times on Kologarn before calling it a night. That's ok for me, as it's a new boss and stuff, but some if not all of those wipes were tanking errors. I'll just give our group and tactic for it.

2 prot pallies
2 resto druids and 1 holy pally
1 ranged dps (mage)
4 melee dps (1 rogue, 2 warriors, 1 shaman)

What we did (tried): One of the pally's ran in and grab aggro, other pally (me) goes dps on his right (our left) arm with all other dps. When that arm was around 20% I went to his torso and taunted him while other pally goes to arm (reason is that our ranged dps is kinda weak, so we need a fresh tank on the torso to kill the adds in time) and when it goes down, consecrate + avenger shield + HotR + ... with mage aid after 3 sec and melee moves to torso. When adds are down he comes back to me and taunt off me (Even if I only have 1 debuff) then me and melee goes back to arm when it respawns and dps till 20%, changing again and so on.

What went wrong:
- Sometimes the tank at the torso dies suddenly even if it hasn't got 2 stacks yet, happened 2-3 times. While I dunno what happened, I think our pally healer (who's assigned to spam MT) got gripped / eye beamed and thus couln't heal MT enough
- Sometimes the fresh tank at the torso gets 2 debuffs in like 10 sec, happened 2 times. Bug?
- Sometimes the torsotank got 2 debuffs (in combination with previous) while the adds are still alive and thus had to taunt boss with 2-3 adds on him, happened 3-4 times.

I was starting to think some healers / dps / tanks arent ready for this yet, but we downed those first 4 bosses relatively easy (3 wipes at Ignis due to lack of ranged, rest one shotted).

Can someone rate our strategy for him, considering our lack of ranged dps for add aoe, and maybe give some improvements on it? I especially don't like the part with "dps to 20% then switch tanks" but I don't see another solution to prevent stacks on tank while dealing with adds. Also can those debuffs be parried / dodged / blocked and what's the timer on it? It seems really random for me, sometimes it falls off, other times it got stacked to 2+ in like 10-20 sec.

Thx for any help

Ninja edited your title... Read the Announcement for further help! -- Guillex

[Dakiros]

Well first off you really don't have to "move" to the arm, you can hit it just fine from your torso tanking position. The arm doesn't actually get tanked either, so the rotation that you have going is unnecessary. Just have your 2 tanks stay on the torso, call out a switch when one gets 2 stacks of the debuff, have the one not tanking him tank the adds when they come up. How often you get hit by the debuff depends on how often he hits you, if you have high enough avoidance you can go the whole fight without building up 2 stacks.

[Malthrax]

Also... if you're not in exactly the right exact freakin' spot when you taunt off your co-tank, Kologarn will use his raid-wipe spell (Petrifying Breath) on you.

The description of the spell/ability is wrong. It says "casts if there are no targets in melee range", but what it really appears to mean is "casts if the person who has aggro is not in melee range". If you're standing under the arm, turn, and taunt the torso as you're running back to your co-tank, you will die.

We ran into the same damned thing on Saturday night. Called it after a half-dozen wipes, each one due to one of the two tanks getting hit with Petrifying Breath. Next attempt, we'll handle it exactly like the Bear boss in Zul'aman - both tanks go in together, stand right on top of one another, and just dps/threat-gen on the torso the entire time, taunt-swapping as needed.

[Jasari]

For tank swapping, just have the Kologarn tank call out as soon as he's at two stacks of the debuff and have the other tank take over. However is the OT when the adds spawn can pick them up, it probably won't be the same person each time.

The MT will take quite a bit of damage even with 1 debuff, so use CDs liberally and make sure healers are always spamming heals. It's a very short fight so going OOM isn't really a risk.

[Sophotrates]

Thx for the replies, but this leaves me with 1 possible problem:

Suppose the current tank of the torso got 1 debuff and the arm dies, so the OT goes pickup the adds, but then just as he get's aggro, the MT get his second debuff. What would you do then in such situation? Let the OT tank both torso and adds while the MT tries to taunt / overaggro the adds asap? Or rather do some tricky manouver like RD from MT on OT before the OT taunts boss?

Otherwise it would be a good strategy, only this problem troubles me, so that's why I prefer the switching at 20% of arm...

[Jasari]

Thx for the replies, but this leaves me with 1 possible problem:

Suppose the current tank of the torso got 1 debuff and the arm dies, so the OT goes pickup the adds, but then just as he get's aggro, the MT get his second debuff. What would you do then in such situation? Let the OT tank both torso and adds while the MT tries to taunt the adds of asap? Or rather do some tricky manouver like RD from MT on OT before the OT taunts boss?

Otherwise it would be a good strategy, only this problem troubles me, so that's why I prefer the switching at 20% of arm...

Yeah, we've had that happen before and I just taunted the body while I still had some adds on me. The OT was able to pull a couple off me and the rest of the adds died pretty quickly. The adds don't hit hard at all and only last a few seconds if you have 1-2 AOE DPS on them.

[BubbaBill]

I have a question about Kologarns eye attack. I read somewhere a while back that it always targets whoever is furthest away from him. Is anybody able to confirm this? We have some people who are movement challenged and if we could have it always targetting the same person would be very helpfull.

[Jasari]

I have a question about Kologarns eye attack. I read somewhere a while back that it always targets whoever is furthest away from him. Is anybody able to confirm this? We have some people who are movement challenged and if we could have it always targetting the same person would be very helpfull.

Definitely targets random non-MT raid members, regardless of who is farthest away.

[Sophotrates]

Hehe ok, we're going back tomorrow and we'll try both ways again, hopefully with more ranged dps, and stick to the one that seems the best untill he goes down. Thx for the help

[Belloc]

I have a question about Kologarns eye attack. I read somewhere a while back that it always targets whoever is furthest away from him. Is anybody able to confirm this? We have some people who are movement challenged and if we could have it always targetting the same person would be very helpfull.

You can have everyone in melee range with one person outside of melee range (hunter). That person will get all of the eye beams unless they are cast when people are thrown from the arm.

This adds in the problem that healers in melee range will be interrupted somewhat frequently, which causes some major issues. Doing this on 10-man with 2 healers may be asking for trouble.

Thx for the replies, but this leaves me with 1 possible problem:

Suppose the current tank of the torso got 1 debuff and the arm dies, so the OT goes pickup the adds, but then just as he get's aggro, the MT get his second debuff. What would you do then in such situation? Let the OT tank both torso and adds while the MT tries to taunt / overaggro the adds asap? Or rather do some tricky manouver like RD from MT on OT before the OT taunts boss?

Otherwise it would be a good strategy, only this problem troubles me, so that's why I prefer the switching at 20% of arm...

If that happens, shield wall through it. Tank swap after the adds are dead and the shield wall is down. Make sure the tank with shield wall up is tanking Kologarn at the point where it could happen again (which it won't, since that situation is rare enough in the first place).

Don't bring the adds into melee range of the boss... they blow up and do AOE.

[Falibard]

Biggest tip I can give... in 10 man, when you only have two tanks, if you just finished up killing the arm adds and the other tank calls out for a taunt DO NOT taunt until you are in melee range as that will/can cause a Petrifying Breath which can wipe a raid.

[Spectrum]

Our general strategy is to have all our melee stand right in front of Kologarn's belt. They can hit all three parts of his body from there, and AE attacks (like HotR) will hit all three.

Whoever is main tank just tanks the boss. If he gets two stacks he calls out and the other tank comes in and takes over, even if adds are up. Adds go down so fast that they'll probably be gone by the time you realize you need to switch. You always have cooldowns to help you through it as well.

Ranged just needs to spread out and DPS/heal. Healers should call out if they have to run from eyebeams so the other healer knows they should take over raid/tank healing as necessary.

The hardest part is just not dying from all the raid damage and your MT will take very heavy and very spiky damage.

[neokai]

Another solution is to have your hunter put up aspect of the wild. Eyebeams and rumble's aoe attack are nature based, not sure about the left arm's shockwave.

When your MT takes 2 debuffs when the right arm is about to break, have him pop bubblewall. Failing which, drink an armor pot/pop trinkets. The increase in avoidance/armor will reduce the damage taken.

[Hadji]

Wow. Please, please, please start using the Enter/Return button to separate your thoughts. Walls o' Text are difficult to read, and don't convey information well.

Thank you. -- Guillex

What we did:

I am tanking the torso till I get 2 debuffs (and through it for the most) and switch with the second tank when the "Right hand" is at 20%. When the hand is destroyed I pick up the adds on concecration and drag them to the "Left hand" which is taking accidental damage throughout all the fight. The AoE damage to kill the adds add up to the damage on it.

The second tank tank tanks the torso till I'm rid of the adds and takes large punches through the 1-handed phase (I'm tanking with either druid or warrior partner so I'm on adds duty but if you're 2 paladins pick the one with most EH to take it) and I pickup for him when needed.

Back at 20% on the "Right hand" I'm off to take the adds again and drag them to the "Left hand" which has just enough health to survive till I reach it. There I take the adds from destroying it and Kologarn takes 1M damage in 20sec leaving the torso tank free of the annoying smashes for about 40 seconds and giving a breath of fresh air to the healers and a lot of space for the DPS to go wild. (He can't apply the debuff while handless). When the "Right hand" is back we destroy it one more time if needed but by that time Kologarn is usually at 150K HP so he just dies before it.

*edit: Edited for conformace. Sorry for the trouble

[Belloc]

I think dragging the adds to the left arm would only cause issues.

Dragging the adds to the left arm means that AOE on them will be stifled and that they could be hurting the melee as they move through. I feel that you'd lose more overall damage by wasting time dragging the adds to the left arm. Now, I could see a DK using some ranged AOEs on them to get them to move over, but that just seems a bit convoluted to me.

In my experience, you'll get 3 right arm deaths before the left arm is set to die. At this point, the boss is usually low enough on health that the left arm's death will kill him. Obviously this is dependent on how much DPS your raid is putting out, but I feel that this allows for a much more comfortable flow.


Do what works for you, but keep those things in mind.