Hi all,

Here are some strategies of the first bosses in Ulduar.

Razorscale

25-man Abilities

* Fireball - Inflicts fire damage to an enemy. Deals 11,000-12,000 fire damage.
* Wing Buffet - Knocks back players in a 35 yards radius around the caster. 1.5 cast.
* Flame Breath - Inflicts 17500 to 22500 Fire damage to players in a cone in front of the caster. 2.5 cast.
* Flame Buffet - Increases the Fire damage a player takes by 1500 for 1 min.
* Devouring Flame - Spits a Lava Bomb at a player, inflicting 8788 to 10212 Fire damage and deals 8788 to 10212 Fire damage every second to anyone staying within 6 yards of the explosion. This effect lasts for 25 secs.
* Fuse Armor - Reduces the armor, attack and movement speed of an enemy by 20% for 20 sec. Stacks up to 5 times.
* Berserk: Increases the caster's attack speed by 150% and all damage it deals by 900% for 30 min. Razorscale gains this debuff after 8-10 minutes.

Adds

Dark Rune Guardian

* Melee swing: 7,000-8,000 on Expedition Engineer (ally mob).
* Stormstrike: instantly attacks with both weapons (10,000 damage). Puts a magical debuff on the target. Should be dispelled.

Dark Rune Sentinel

* Whirlwind: 30,000-40,000 physical on cloth.

Dark Rune Watcher

* Melee Swing: 10,000 physical.
* Lightning Bolt: single target nature damage, deals 8,000-12,000.
* Chain Lightning: deals damage to 5 targets, each successive hit increases damage. Deals about 11,000 nature damage. Interrupt-able.

Strategy

On normal (10 man), the fight proceeds exactly like the 25-man variant, except that only two turrets need to be repaired and fired instead of four.

This boss fight consists of three phases, alternating air and ground phases until 50% damage taken, and then a pure ground phase from 50% to 0%.

Recommended Setup: 3 Tanks, 3 Tank Healers, 3 Raid Healers, 0-2 Floating Healers, 14-16 DPS (composition irrelevant).

Talking to the Expedition Commander will begin the event with Razorscale in her air phase.

Razorscale appears to have two separate Beserk timers, the first applies during phase 1 and 2 when rotating the air / ground phases and occurs approximately 5 minutes into the fight, a second longer one is in operation if she is successfully moved into phase 3 before this. This places a limit of roughly 3 ground phases on the raid.

Air Phase

The air phase consists of defending the Expedition dwarves while they repair the harpoon turrets. During this phase, the focus should be on defeating adds (Sentinels are priority, Watchers must be CC'd and killed second, Guardians last), and staying out of Devouring Flame. As the turrets get repaired one at a time, they can be clicked to fire a harpoon at Razorscale.

25 man positioning

The raid should be split into three groups, one near the far side of the circle opposite the harpoons, and two groups positioned slightly round the circle back towards the harpoons. Each group should engage the spawns from a single pod and destroy them, there is no need for crowd control and AoE can be used. If a sentinel spawns all 3 DPS groups should focus fire this target as it presents the greatest and only tank threat amongst the spawned adds.

Raid healers should be assigned behind the three groups to support heal and heal the players assigned to trigger the harpoons.

Watching for projectiles

Razorscale's fireballs and devouring flames will annihilate a group that isn't paying attention. There are no addons that currently track either projectile, so it must be watched closely. To do this, have one or two healers, prior to the fight, look up and target Razorscale and then use /focus. Make sure cast bars and target of target can be seen on the focus (test on a player in the group). During the fight, have the healers, between healing, watch the focus for Razorscale's targets. Each target can only be seen briefly, for less than half a second so they have to be on their toes. If no cast bar is shown, but someone is targeted, it means a fireball will hit them (it can miss). Priests can shield these targets, and others can just pre-heal to get them up immediately after being struck. It's important to keep them healed in case they get targeted multiple times in a row. When Razorscale uses Devouring Flame, a 1 second cast bar will appear, and the target will appear right as it finishes. The person who as targeted should be notified immediately, and that person needs to begin moving (preferably away from others in the raid) or be ready to move immediately. The devouring flame will track the target briefly (if you move, it will move) before striking the ground (you can see a blue ball fall into the location before spreading into flame). If you move early, it's hard to know where it will hit. If you stand in one place, you can position yourself safely and then run when the flames are about to appear.
Ground Phase

Once all four turrets have been repaired and fired, Razorscale will be forced to the ground where she will remain stunned for several seconds. Everyone should immediately move behind her, and DPS should focus on bringing her HP down as much as possible while the tanks hold any remaining adds. After the stun wears off, Razorscale will breath then return to the air and begin the air phase again.

For this phase tanks should converge onto the rear of Razorscale allowing their DPS to be added to that available in this phase, with 5s remaining until the stun wears off the tanks should move with any remaining adds towards the furthest point on the circle and allow full raid AoE damage to be applied to the adds. As new pods appear tanks should move their adds back to their regular tanking positions.

Phase 3

Once Razorscale is brought to 50% health, she will land permanently, at which point she will need to be tanked facing away from the group to avoid breaths. The fight from this point is very simple, she will continue using Devouring Flame, she will do a knock back to everyone within 35 yards, and inflict the Flame Buffet debuff. During this ground phase, the DPS should go all out in order to defeat Razorscale before the Flame Buffet debuffs cause the tank to be one-shot.

There is another debuff that happens during this fight. In phase 2, when you are tanking Razorscale around your tanks will get a debuff called "Fused Armor" which adds a slowing effect to the tank. When this debuff hits 5 stacks the tank can't move or use any abilities, including taunt. You need to change tanks when the debuff gets to 2 stacks in order to finish the fight.

Note you can no longer dps boss while it is in the air.

TANKSPOT VIDEO

TankSpot video of the encounter

XT-002 Deconstructor

Abilities

* Gravity Bomb: Charges the target with dark energy, causing them to explode and pull in nearby allies after 9 sec. After 9 seconds, the Gravity Bomb spawns at the player's location: Pulls enemies within 20 (Heroic: 10) yards into a gravity well, dealing 17100 to 18900 (Heroic: 19000 to 21000) damage.
* Tympanic Tantrum: Deals damage equal to 10% of each player's maximum health every 1 sec for 12 sec. Nearby enemies are also dazed for the duration. Think Doomwalker's earthquake. One minute cooldown.
* Light Bomb: Charges the target with divine energy, causing them to sear nearby allies for 9 sec. The debuff on the targeted player deals 2750 (Heroic: 3500) damage to all enemies within 10 yards of the caster.

Hard mode

* Heartbreak: Activated when killing the Exposed Heart, engaging Hard mode and healing the boss to full: The heart of the XT-002 Deconstructor has been severed, removing the combat limitations of the XT-002 Deconstructor. Damage increased by 30%. Health increased by 40%.
* Void Zone: Gravity Bombs summon a Void Zone that deals Shadow damage to enemies that stand within it. 5000 damage on Normal, 7500 on Heroic.
* Life Spark: Light Bombs summon a Life Spark that deals damage to nearby enemies. The Sparks have Static Charged, which deals Nature damage to all enemies within 500 yards every 3 sec. 800 damage on Normal, 2000 on Heroic.

Strategy
Phase 1: Tank and Spank

* Note: there is a 6 minute enrage timer on 10-man, and a 6 minute enrage timer on 25-man.

Group makeup

You will need 2 tanks, 2-3 healers, and 5-6 dps. It is strongly advised that all dps have 2800-3500+ dps for the 10 man encounter (if using 5 dps, you will need to average 3500). Any lower and it is most likely that XT will eventually enrage (you will have about 5-10 seconds to continue fighting before all members are dead). Also note that DPS is not constant in this fight, as the heart takes double damage and adds must be taken care off.

Positioning

The boss should be tanked at the top of the stairs, this gives the raid a little bit of extra time to dps the heart before adds are near the boss. Ranged DPS and healers have several choices for positioning:

1. Many groups try to simply stack, however this increases raid damage significantly.
2. Alternatively, some choose to designate two groups that are stacked to the left and to the right of the starting area (within healing distance of one another).
3. Spread the raid out from the boss in a large arc up to maximum distance (35 yards for healers); everyone should be about 6-10 yards apart. Healers need to be spread throughout the raid, and the main healers should be closest to melee. If ranged gets hit with Light Bomb, they do not need to move. If ranged gets hit with Gravity Bomb, they need to move 10 yards away from everyone else to avoid causing additional damage (15 yards to avoid the suction). If melee gets hit with either, they need to run away from the raid towards the north side (the stairs). Make sure you do not suction the Main Tank.

Regardless of where ranged classes stand, everyone should be at least 10 yards away from melee, who should be arranged 360 degrees around XT (since it has no cleave).

Reacting to the debuff

Basically, ranged should only have to deal with ranged characters with the debuffs, and melee should only have to deal with debuffs affecting melee characters. When someone gets hit with Gravity Well or Light Bomb, that person should immediately move away from the group to minimize damage, especially in the case of Gravity Well.

Healers

There needs to be at least two players focused on main healing. Raid healers need to use AOE and direct healing spells whenever Light Bomb appears, or Tympanic Tantrum begins. HoTs are very ineffective at all times unless used on the Main Tank or a healer during Tympanic Tantrum, however AOE heals are more vital during that period of raid wide damage. When Tympanic Tantrum begins, healers need to throw something on themselves quickly, and then begin healing others (preferably AOE heals on themselves and anyone nearby). With enough healers (8 on Heroic), AOE spells that only target members of a specific group tend to be wasted. Single target, direct healing spells and instant cast non-HoTs are the best (Power Word: Shield especially). Players need to pay attention for Tympanic Tantrum and make sure that everyone in the raid gets at least some moderate heals.

* Holy Priests should be throwing Circle of Healing on the melee and ranged groups where needed. Prayer of Healing tends to be too slow, but with enough haste can be very effective as well. You should use Power Word: Shield on debuff targets, and Flash Heal should be ready to keep victims of Light Bomb alive.
* Druids should HoT themselves and the Main Tank, and use Wild Growth.
* Shamans should use Chain Heal on the Main Tank during Tympanic Tantrum.
* Holy Paladins are best using Beacon of Light on themselves if healing the Main Tank.

Tympanic Tantrum

During tantrum players will have a daze effect which slows their movement speed by almost half. This ability can be avoided with enough DPS, by revealing the heart before the Tantrum. Latest Blue post stated that "XT-002 Deconstructor will no longer cast Light Bomb or Gravity Bomb while channeling Tympanic Tantrum", which should make this phase easier.

Avoiding the Tantrum

Though complete testing of AoE Avoidance of the various classes has yet to be verified, your standard invulnerability abilities work, though DPS loss in this fight can prove fatal. Also, while Hunter Deterrence is ineffective, Rogue Feint does reduce Tantrum damage in half while the buff is in effect.
Phase 2: Adds

This occurs at 75%, 50%, and 25% health.

Adds

XT-002 will stop attacking and become untargettable, and begin spawning 3 different types of adds from the junk piles in the 4 corners of the Scrapyard. In addition, he drops his heart which takes 2x damage from players, and the damage is done to the boss as well. Note that there won't be a constant stream of robots.

* XS-013 Scrapbots: heals XT-002 for 60k each if they reach him. They need to be AoE'd down and cannot reach the boss for any reason unless killed. They can be stunned, frost nova'd, and knocked back, etc.
* XE-321 Boombots: explode upon getting killed, dealing damage to any players or NPCs in range. These have priority and should be single targeted and nuked by ranged. It is best if they are surrounded by scrapbots or near the Heart.
* XM-024 Pummelers: standard adds which should be off tanked - Pummelers should never be targetted for DPS as the tight enrage timer does not allow for it.

Off tanks need to be watching for the first Pummelers to appear, which should be picked up and tanked wherever is convenient (near other bots or the boss so that off tanks can help deal damage to either). Have the offtank(s) hold aggro on them to the sides of the raid. Scrapbots will spawn in small groups of about 5-8. Have people keep an eye out and call out where and when they are coming. When scrapbots get closer to the raid group, they need to be AOE'd down immediately (a Holy Priest using Mind Sear can help reduce the number of DPS wasted on scrapbots). Mages are valuable in that they can nova any of the bots during this phase. Boombots need to be DPS'd when they are near the Heart or scrapbots (or when not near anyone). Melee should stay on the Heart. Note that scrapbot groups can appear simultaneously, and at varying times.

When the heart goes back up into the boss and XT becomes targettable again, unkilled adds will still be alive. Pummelers will need to be offtanked throughout the duration of the enitre fight.

The Heart

* Health: 10.0M (Heroic), 1.5M (Normal)- Lasts 20 seconds.

Because of the double damage, everyone should be focused on DPSing the boss's heart during this phase (even healers; although priority goes to off tanks and anyone hit by Boombot blasts) as any damage done to the heart is passed along to XT. The raid has a bit of time after the heart drops and before the adds actually start spawning to do so. Healers, if they can spare the mana, should be helping out too because no one in this phase but the off tank (on the pummelers) should be taking any damage at all. Unless you want to try hard mode, make sure you do not kill the heart. Some raids are able to take the heart down without a bloodlust, in which case everyone has to show restraint to avoid starting Hard Mode. It is possible to defeat XT without having the ability to kill the heart (lack of DPS); however you will still need to average about 1.5M damage per DPS player (4000-6000+ DPS). Bloodlust and all DPS cooldowns should be used on the first adds phase (75% health).

Due to the short enrage for such an encounter, it is imperative that the heart be nuked down to about 5% health. If done so and also managed to kill all the scrapbots to avoid healing the boss. Once the heart phase is over (20 sec.) The boss should have 55 - 60% health, thus the raid can quickly enter phase 2 again, avoiding the tantrums which kills most raids. Try to nuke the heart as much as possible again, ofcourse it won't be as much as last time since cooldowns have been used, but this is the best way to burn his health off quickly!

TANKSPOT VIDEO

Tankspot XT-002 Deconstructor Video