Ultraxion (10 H) - help us improve

[Trexia]

My guild just downed Heroic Ultraxion last night for the first time after spending a 2 nights of wipes on him, but we just barely scraped through.
Logs:
w w w.worldoflogs.com/reports/flzjvaxf38nl6e6a/

I have some worries about whether we'll be able to consistently down him every week. I'm not sure if it's a healing issue or dps issue but we seem to be dying soon after getting the time loop buff. Last night we didn't have our usual tank (bolded the people we had), but i'll just list what classes and roles we have available. Suggestions on the best makeup would be appreciated.

Raid team is:

Tanks
Prot Warrior (Arms offspec)
Blood DK
Feral Druid

Heals
Shaman
Paladin
Druid

DPS
Shadow Priest (disc offspec)
Shadow Priest
Rogue
Fire Mage
Arcane Mage
Warlock (switches between Aff & Demo)

Like I said, while we did manage to down him I'm feeling like it was a fluke. Before we got it we were constantly wiping at about 8% and the healers just couldn't keep us up.
Any suggestions on how we could improve on this fight would be appreciated.

[Wellaimed]

Save lust till around 20% for one. I also see that your dps is pretty sub par. Keep in mind, the longer the fight goes, the more healing intensive it is.

Here is the logs from our last kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=9523&e=9834

And here is a link to our kill video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOzf-...C7eJTgat15ZE2Q

[Deleted]

Your DPS, especially mages could use some work. For example your Arc mage is not reforged properly, he's reforging OUT of his BEST stat! I'm sure going more into it I'll find other stuff, however my main spec right now is heals so I'll focus on that. Also your DPS while low are still beating enrage so they are not the primary issue, not to mention that if you wanted more DPS you could just have the war play arms (great DPS spec) and the feral tank (highest tank DPS).

Now your heal comp.. you have arguably the best comp for this fight, this is exactly what my guild runs and we don't even let anyone get below 50%, let alone die. It's quite manageable even in the last minute if you know what you're doing, your healers have the gear for it too. I'll focus on the last minute of the fight as that's where all of the intensity lies.

Shaman
-First off, I see a Healing Wave being cast...a lot. I've no idea why he cast his weakst single target heal in super damage intense situations, I can only assume he was out of mana, which is obviously a major problem. I assume he's taking red buff, perhaps you should consider changing that around. Shamans do quite well with green, let the pally take red and carry heals for the first part of the fight. The pally can afford to spend mana early on since he'll have blue anyway, but the shaman can't. So let the Shaman conserve mana and wait for green.
- He's using his 4pc too early, it's already over by the time he reaches the last minute

Paladin
- IMPORTANT!!!! DON'T CAST HR ON THE SAME PERSON! This is wasting a HUUUGE chunk of it's healing, I see Pallies do this all the time and their HPS increases by as much as 50% as soon as they stop. It is immensely important that he stops this, on every fight ever. This alone might make you kill the fight without a problem.
- He's casting Flash of Light with blue buff. Kind of a stupid waste there, with blue DL will already be below the GCD. Why cast a weaker spell? In any case, let the Shaman do tank heals and focus on spamming HR.
- He's not using his personal CDs in the last minute. This is kind of self explanatory - 20% healing, 20% crit and 20% haste is an awful lot. They need to be up and ready for when the clock hits 4:59, along with a Volcanic Potion and he needs to spam HR on alternating targets (4-5 of them)

So to summarize:
- Let the Pally take red so the Shaman actually has mana for the end of the fight
- Both of them need to use their CDs in the last minute, not earlier
- Let Shaman handle tank heals such as they are, especially post-blue buff the Pally shouldn't touch anything other than HR
- By far the most important thing, the Pally needs to stop overwriting HR and alternate it's targets

Do all that and I 100% guarantee you last til 6 min mark. Just for reference, on our first kill as holy I spiked to 150k HPS during the last minute with meh gear. On our 2nd kill with better gear and more experience it was 200k. Your Pally is at 75k, if he changes those few things it'll likely double his healing, imagine how much that'll help considering you already survive to 5:30.

[Deleted]

I'd use the prot warrior as arms and ditch the spriest (disc offspec) Arms plays very well on this fight because of massive amounts of rage.

Contrary to the above, our shaman takes red, and our paladin the other 2, allowing the paladin to spam holy radiance at the end and get many ticks because of the extra ticks from the haste.

You don't need both shadow priests for your rotation of 6.
Both tanks,
Spriest
Rogue
Fire mage
Hpally + Arcane Mage.

This trick increased our DPS a lot:
Have your healer click heroic will 2 seconds before the pull. Pop hero a second after the pull, then allow your healers to pop hero again late into the fight when they need it, but your dps will have it at the start when everything lines up giving the greatest raid dps.

[Deleted]

Contrary to the above, our shaman takes red, and our paladin the other 2, allowing the paladin to spam holy radiance at the end and get many ticks because of the extra ticks from the haste.

Who said anything about Pally not taking blue? I said the Shaman should take green, not green+blue. Obviously blue always go to the Paladin.

And if you'd actually read, the only reason I said that is because their Shaman was OOM during the last minute. At least I assume he was OOM since I don't see any other reason why he cast Healing Waves at that time. Whomever takes red buff will be carrying heals for a bit early on in the fight, since the pally has blue he can afford to spend mana on this whereas the shaman can't. Red Shaman and green+blue Pally is also viable, both work but not if healers are running OOM at the end.

Also if you actually looked at the logs, they're already using the bloodlust trick, they have two bloodlusts one at the start and another at 5:00.

[Trexia]

Thanks a lot for the advice, I'll forward your tips onto our healers. Really helpful

Ravengage, you're correct the Shaman is ooming out at the end. We'll look at changing the crystal allocations and have him conserve mana at the start. If our healers could just be able to heal for a little bit longer we'd one shot this every week.

As for replacing the spriest with the warrior dps... My ideal situation would be to be able to down this boss without having to worry about the dps makeup too much. A lot of you are saying to get the warrior to dps, but he's one of those guys I can't 100% count on to be there. It's not really a viable solution for me.

Other than the arcane mage and tanks, I don't know if there's much else they can do to boost the dps without better gear.

[NotMega]

Greatly appreciate the feedback so far, I'm Ucanhastotem by the way.

Yeah I'm using Healing Wave as Red since the Holy Paladin is gettin green/blue, so near the end of the fight I'm practically oom. I keep Healing Rain up nearly 100% of the time which takes a chunk of my mana so thats why I'm forced to use Healing Wave to conserve. I also recently reforged spirit off all my gear and into mastery/haste, which would contribute to me being low on mana. Should I reforge back so I can use GHW more often? Although I feel my mastery helps a lot in this fight especially the closer we get to the end when we can't keep everyone at 100% health anymore.

[Deleted]

Greatly appreciate the feedback so far, I'm Ucanhastotem by the way.

Yeah I'm using Healing Wave as Red since the Holy Paladin is gettin green/blue, so near the end of the fight I'm practically oom. I keep Healing Rain up nearly 100% of the time which takes a chunk of my mana so thats why I'm forced to use Healing Wave to conserve. I also recently reforged spirit off all my gear and into mastery/haste, which would contribute to me being low on mana. Should I reforge back so I can use GHW more often? Although I feel my mastery helps a lot in this fight especially the closer we get to the end when we can't keep everyone at 100% health anymore.

I don't think it matters what your reforge is. Our Shaman has reforge ADD, he's tried every stat and they all have their ups and downs. I think you're fine doing whatever you're doing, your HPS spiked to 75k during last minute which is fine for a Shaman and your overall healing is good. Just keep up on tank heals so that the pally can be free to abuse how OP Holy Radiance is. For what it's worth currently our Shaman is using heavy spirit and is liking it a lot, as soon as your Pally partner switches up his HR casting health bars shouldn't go low enough for your mastery to be as useful.

What happens with us is something like this:
Start - red: We both heal equally, I use a personal CD to pick up extra slack so he doesn't have to
Red - green: I (pally) practically solo heal, he just lays a rain down, spot tank heals and regens via Lightning Bolt. I use my 2nd personal CD
Green - blue: He throws out a bit more, with both of us having buffs this part is really easy
Blue - 4:59: I enter this phase at ~30-50k mana, that's enough to last until the end with blue. I begin the OP spam of HR while he regens some mana again
5:00 - death: We both spam heal our asses off, my personal CDs are back up and so is his 4pc

That's a pretty rough estimate, don't take it as set in stone or anything. The point is that by using personal CDs and red buff my job as Pally is to open up times for our Shaman to regen. This costs me nearly all my mana by the ~4 min mark, but then I get blue and it's all good. His job is to do as much as he can while keeping his mana high enough for a minute of spam at the end. In the end we both pop a Volcanic Potion, personal CDs and go to town. We've healed to 6min with no deaths.

Good luck, I'm sure you guys'll repeat the kill easily.

[Deleted]

I would say reforge back to spirit, this will prevent you from going oom at the end. If you're not specced teluric currents, do so!
Giving a shaman the green buff means that the paladin really is going to be carrying the healing at the end, you should be able to take red buff and not go oom until the end.
I mentioned the hero trick since someone mentioned popping it at 20% which is a waste.

[Deleted]

On your kill attempt you popped Hero way to late. The first Hour of Twilight occurs 45 seconds after you engage Ultraxion which means to get the full benefit from Hero it needs to be basically popped as soon as Ult becomes active.

[Wilderness]

Your Arcane mage only potted once, and both mages should be using their CDs more. The fire mage should have at least 1 more Combustion, and your kill time might have made it so he could get 2 more. Your Arcane mage only used mana gem twice, evocation once (!), and AP 5 times (he has 4T13 bonus so that should be higher). In comparison in our last kill I used Combustion 4 times (1 more than your fire mage), our arcane mage used AP 6 times, evocation twice, and mana gem 3 times - and our kill was 40 seconds faster. Your Arcane mage could also do better on his uptime, there's no reason not to be at 98%+ and he's just under 92%.

[Hankenji]

I'll play.

Looking solely at your Warlock as I know warlocks and their DPS is low.

Immolate uptime is fine and only cast once so effectively used Hand of Gul'dan on CD.
Shadowflame uptime is about where it should be so I believe it was used effectively on CD.
Corruption uptime is really low, no reason for it to be below really 94% or so much less down at 85.
Bane of Doom uptime is also low, when you only have to refresh it every minute having below 90% probably cost him/her at least one tick and probably two of a really hard hitting spell.

Used Demon Soul 3 times and pet swapped at the start, so that's good.
Used Meta 3 times, presumably on the pull at 2:00 and at 4:00 so that's fine, holding the final Meta until execute if they didn't might be a better idea/
Prepotted and Repotted, good
Used his or her 4 set 6 times, if used on CD over a ~5:30 fight should be looking at 7 or 8 times so a bit of lost DPS there.
Doomguard damage is low, should use it on the pull after all procs are rolling.
Needs to rag on Acrylic, the Spriest he/she gave DI too because Spriests should give close to 100% uptime and they only gave 89%

Might be armory issues as well no time for that now :P

[Deleted]

I'll play.
Used Demon Soul 3 times and pet swapped at the start, so that's good.
Used Meta 3 times, presumably on the pull at 2:00 and at 4:00 so that's fine, holding the final Meta until execute if they didn't might be a better idea/
Prepotted and Repotted, good
Used his or her 4 set 6 times, if used on CD over a ~5:30 fight should be looking at 7 or 8 times so a bit of lost DPS there.

Just one question.
5.5 minutes = 330 seconds
330/45 = 7.3333 (So 7 45sec CD's could be cast)
He used the 4set 6 times, but you are forgetting that the 7th went to pet-swapping, as that requires a Soulburn without a Soul Fire. :-) Right?


On a completely different sidenote:
http://i.imgur.com/KeNhi.png <- Is my general advice, without digging way too much through the logs.

[Deleted]

On a completely different sidenote:
http://i.imgur.com/KeNhi.png <- Is my general advice, without digging way too much through the logs.

Pretty much sums up every DPS-check boss ever made.

Also a very accurate representation of healing H Ultrax.

[Hankenji]

Just one question.
5.5 minutes = 330 seconds
330/45 = 7.3333 (So 7 45sec CD's could be cast)
He used the 4set 6 times, but you are forgetting that the 7th went to pet-swapping, as that requires a Soulburn without a Soul Fire. :-) Right?


On a completely different sidenote:
http://i.imgur.com/KeNhi.png <- Is my general advice, without digging way too much through the logs.

I looked at Soulburns cast not at the buff gained so for all I know he could have been Soul Burn portaling on one of them, it was still only 6 :P. The 4 set happens when you SB anything it's not only when SB Soul Fire, that is just what people do because it replenishes the shard.

[Mercadi]

The second shadow priest and fire mage had less than optimal DoT uptimes. Laws, the first spriest, had almost ideal uptime.

[Trexia]

The second shadow priest and fire mage had less than optimal DoT uptimes. Laws, the first spriest, had almost ideal uptime.

You make me feel so fluffy inside

[Thaendra]

Rogues can do very good on this fight - perhaps look into optimizing their rotation. I botched mine pretty bad and still came out good, even without a feral druid to buff my bleeds (thus I had none), so your rogue has the potential gear-wise to do pretty good. The No'Kaled they got recently should up their DPS significantly (relative to other upgrades) on this fight too (looking forward to mine!), but even without it they have meter-topping potential.

My guild's kill was only 3 seconds faster than yours so that's kinda the mindset I'm approaching from.

edit: Oh yes, here's a big thing (not sure if you are doing it already). Put the rogue in at least one of the soaking rotations for Hour of Twilight. They can 100% immune the damage with cloak, but it still counts as landing a hit on them w/ one other person so there is no wipe. Cloak and the debuff have the same CD as combat, so they can immune the damage every time the insta-kill debuff is gone. This allows them to have more uninterrupted DPS time, and also gives the healers a small break because they don't have to heal the rogue before or after Hour of Twilight the same as most soakers.

[Flashforcash]

The second shadow priest and fire mage had less than optimal DoT uptimes. Laws, the first spriest, had almost ideal uptime.

The first shadow priest acrylic is using mind spike in his rotation, so ofc he aint gonna have 100% uptime - he is prolly having the 4 set bonus and theirfor is using the right "new" shadow priest rotation.

I dont know about the other, just did a really fast check on worldoflogs - on my way to work, can have a look on it later when i get home

First forum post btw! YE!

[Bigbazz]

We did it with

Shammy + Druid Healing
Paladin + Warrior tanking
1x Bm Hunter
1x SV Hunter
1x Fury Warrior
1x Shadow Priest
1x Elemental Shaman
1x Warlock (didnt even look at his spec)

Twilights

1. Paladin + Hunter
2. Prot Warr + Fury Warr
3. Hunter + S priest.

Then repeat.

We blew bloodlust on the pull, but healers in the other realm (so they can do it later). I was the Fury Warrior, I shield walled the 1st (+ the warr tanks 4set raid shield wall), and the 2nd time I used rally cry, the 4set raidwide shield wall again and I think I also had a shield on me. The others used relevant survival cooldowns and I was the only one who needed outside attention to survive it. The dps were doing around 35k each, at around 390-393 average ilvl, though the warlock was down at around 26k. Warrior tank did 22k dps and the paladin was a little lower.

We only killed it once, though we have only attempted to kill it once, should have done it sooner but raiding had all but completely stopped with our guild about 2 weeks before christmas until about 2 weeks ago, and then the GM wanted to kill Zon before Ultraxion. The biggest issue we had was probably with random messups of the boss mechanics, or random tank deaths, and lag. When none of that happened we killed it comfortably without any drama.