The Professional Ulduar Moonkin – Tips and Observations. Part one: The Siege of Ulduar.
Quick something about me: Accident, Balance Druid on Azuremyst EU. Raiding is what I do, altough I enjoy causal PvPing in between. Not been playing the druid class for very long – in fact I only rerolled this fellow during early 2009 – but I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since the european release. Hopefully I can enhance your evening a little with my views on the ins and outs of moonkins and their likes!
Enough is enough. Onward! This post – or rather this series – will as the title suggest take a closer look at the Moonkin playstyle in the new 3.1 raid instance: Ulduar. I and my guild is currently sitting with General Vezax down in 10man aswell as 25man. This tragically means that I wont be able to support you with any useful information about the Yogg’Saron fight, nor the Algalon encounter. But hopefully, you’ll do without!
It took a while for me to settle on this topic. With Macbook already having the basics covered – enchants, gear and rotations – I figured there was not much left. I could of course have jabbered about my personal experiences and failures, but why go down that road when I could actually type out something useful? Anyway, mind you, this is not a bible. These are not strategy guides, for those purposes I recommend sites like StratFu or Severance Gaming. These words of advice are not intended as rules or even guidelines; it’s merely minor thoughts and observations about the different encounters in Ulduar. Small things that may go unnoticed. Things that might give you – a fellow Moonkin – some useful inspiration before stepping through the gates! Or it might not. It probably wont. But the power is in my hands, at least for a moment, so let’s abuse it!
Quickly onto today’s subject: The Siege of Ulduar. The first part of Ulduar consists of four bosses, of which two are optional. But that doesn’t make them any less important, right? Anyway, the first encounter is the oh-so-pugable Flame Leviathan. And altough these choppers are pretty neat, they hardly have anything to do with moonkins. So let’s skip ahead.
Razorscale
- I would recommend using Solar Eclipse during the add phase, assuming your guild single targets the mobs. This makes it easier on the movement, and will probably increase your overall eclipse time since you rarely have time to put up IFF/Scorches for the extra crit. Starfire’s relatively long casting time will cause problems aswell, seeing as you’re get in more than one or two before the mob is dead. Wrath often involves a lot less interrupted casts and a lot more laserpain.
- Make sure eclipse is either on ICD or off cooldown right before Razorscale gets pulled down. This is a no-brainer. Getting through a full eclipse rotation will max your potential. This is (obviously) the time to pop cooldowns such a trinkets/treants/starfall.
Ignis the Furnace Master
- With the recent nerfs the pot really shouldn’t be problem, but if it is, make sure to pop Barkskin, and then either go into Bear or throw a HT on yourself to ease the pain on the healers.
- Try to time your DoTs with the flame jets. If you feel that you aren’t going to get in that extra Starfire, retreat to reapplying Moonfire and IS. Even if they’re already up and running, clip them while flying through the air (unless you suffer from mana issues). Take real care with the Jets, seeing as an interrupt can ruin an eclipse or force you into the wrong one. If, however, you get interrupted while trying to procc eclipse, I recommend switching. The DPS loss should be acceptable compared to not casting for the full lockout, especially with Solar and Lunar being so close.
- Stay away from Starfall, unless you’re confident that your tanks can handle it without any issues. If you’re doing the 4-minute achievement however, go all out.
- If you’re assigned to the construct, I’d recommend throwing a Starfire if you’re not certain that your non-crit Wraths hit for more than 5K. This lets you spellqueue on Ignis without worrying about the result of your cast (Seeing as SF hits for enough without a crit.)
XT-002 Deconstructor
- Unglyphed Typhoon is golden against the addwaves. When the opportunity arises, use it to fire a bombbot into a group of adds, and enjoy the result. (Either than or use roots, but that can be hard seeing as they break so easily.)
- Use your CDs during the heartphases. Again, no-brainer. 101, really.
- Starfall! Oh halo thair. Pop it when the adds are close for maximum output.
- If you’re doing Heartbreaker, pop Treants right after a Tantrum to keep them alive (After activating the hardmode, of course.)
Thin advice, you say? Damn straight! If you come up with anything else, please feel free to throw it out there.
Coming up (shocker) – the Antechamber of Ulduar.
/Accident.
PS. Please notify me about any typos and/or grammar errors. Even I make mistakes. A lot.
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Of course, Xiera has to throw in his two cents…
Razorscale
– /agree with Solar Eclipse, for different reasons though. The adds die *fast*. You’ll be able to get one, maybe two, Starfires in per add if your raid is focus firing. Use Starfire to proc Eclipse, and be the pewpew laserkin we all know you want to be.
– If you pop heroism when Razorscale is pulled down, you’ll want to just spam Starfire, ignoring Eclipse. If not, proc whichever Eclipse if best for you (based on your gear) and blast her away. Much like the adds phase of XT, you’ll probably want to pop your cooldowns when Razorscale is pulled down so you can get into phase 2 faster.
Ignus
– You could do Bear Form and Barkskin. Or you could do Barkskin and HoT yourself up. You can cast healing spells on yourself while in the pot, and this, more than the extra stamina in bear form, will save your life.
– The biggest thing is to avoid Flame Jets, if at all possible. If, for some reason, you don’t, it becomes a judgment call as to whether you switch schools of magic for a cast or two until you can get back on rotation. Casting DoTs while you’re flying isn’t a bad idea — it will save you from having to use global cooldowns to refresh your DoTs when you can actually be nuking the boss.
– I haven’t personally found Starfall to be a problem. We have a death knight yanking the adds around, though.
– If you’re on constructs duty, remember that the constructs drop all aggro when they become molten. Blast them with a Starfire to break your roots and pick up immediate aggro. If you have the option, work with a DK offtank. Death Grip and Chains of Ice make dealing with the adds trivial.
XT
– This guy’s a joke, really. Blast the heart as much as you can when it’s out. If you’re not popping heroism during heart phase, you’re doing it wrong! (Just make sure you don’t kill the heart — that heals him to full and puts you in hard mode.)
– I haven’t actually seen anyone Typhoon bombbots into other adds. That sounds really cool; I’ll have to try it.
– Starfall has a double use here during heart phase. Not only does it damage the adds (and the heart!), it also provides your mini-heroism, speeding up your casts by 20%, allowing you even more damage on the heart.
– While back-to-back heart phases are a LOT of fun (seriously, it does wonders for my raid’s ego), it’s still important to handle adds.
Nice post, though. I picked up a few neat tools that I’ll have to try this weekend.
I live! I have some awful internet where I´m staying but I thought I´d reply with my own personal experience with these bosses. Apologies for the typos in advance, they have really weird keyboards in South America.
Razorscale:
Usually just Hurricane most of the adds, and switch to Lunar Eclipse on the big Sentinels since I am usually the only one who focus fires them down. I do use Eclipse even when Hero is popped on Razorscale, I enjoy the crits and the lack of an aggro table while he is stunned.
Ignis:
I only pop Barkskin while in the slag pot, it seems our healers finally got the hang of healing the person in the pot. I´m always on construct duty, so I don´t have many other tips. I do refresh DoTs while flying, and pop Barkskin before Flame Jets whenever its off cooldown.
I still am a firm believer that moving while increase you chances of not getting hit with Flame Jets, I once avoided 4 in a row by timing a jump, and it never said resisted, missed, or anything like that.
XT-002:
Roots are also clutch on the add phase. YOu cant 1-shot a bomb bot on 25man like you can in 10, so if you have a bomb bot running ahead of some scrap bots, you can root it so that they get together, and blow up the bomb bot for some nice AoE. I have been wanting to glyph Hurricane just for this fight but I haven´t gotten to it yet
Good post though, I´ll try to comment a little more but the speed of this internet makes me want to /wrists.
Macbook
Thanks for the comments! A lot of the things you mention I thought about, but I simply disregarded as too obvious. Like not killing the heart on XT – while it is of course important – it’s not really a “tip” of sorts. ^^
A lot of good stuff though. I’ll add some of it, as soon as I get more than a fiver off.
Accident
Since the nerf to ignus you can actualy do without rooting the adds in the fire. My dps was getting bombed from having to follow around the OT. I’m still waiting for my guld to get good enough aoe’rs for me to stay on the heart. I know I can top our rogue’s impressive 8k dps, given the chance.
For us, it depends on who´s the OT. If its a DK tanking the constructs, I don´t have to root the add, I just have to make sure I can shatter it when its in the water.
Good luck on your guild not making you go on the adds
Mac
Regarding Ignis, our tanks usually just eats the fire damage or stands right outside.
Yeah, seriously, in Ignis you shouldnt be rooting at all, with the nerfs, the stacks stacks (see what i did there?!) so fast, that if you took one second more to roots, its already counter-productive (im hoping that word exists
).
Plus the fire hits for a lot less now, you shouldnt have much problems with Adds unless you’re undeargear…
Back on the moonkin…!
In razor i Kite the flames, so sad face for me
(if no one in your raid is kiting them, you should try, its amazing how much easier the fight gets)
For XT002 if you’re doing double heart phases (going all out, you’ll clip the heart phases), try to save Starfall for the second wave, i always find that when wasting it on the first one, we get overwhelmed by the second wave of bots… sucks…, and Typhoon is god in this fight, so fun
, if done right, and spec’ed 2/2 in Gale Winds, a Moonkin should be able to cover a side Alone, assuming you dont get bots at the front and at the back 
.
I've always wanted to try to use my secondary specc for full boomkin aoe (rather than resto, although i end up healing alot
). been thinking that if i have 1 specc for the boss fight's (single target dps specc) and 1 for the adds/trash (XT, Council Hard Mode) it should make things MUCH more easy (and ofc much more funny =D )!
You guys kinda convinced me in this topic that its worth testing =D
and if you havent noticed, the 2 adds before ayuraia (i never get that name right 
) u can root the lightning sphere they send between eachother 
will report back if its a success ^^
atm i love being the only dps'er that can (with 100% certainty) 1shot the adds on ignis