Ulduar – Flame Leviathan

So our guild has been making some progress in Ulduar. I’m so lucky that they want Oui because I think they’d boot me and my lackluster dps if it weren’t for his uber heals. Anyway, so far we’ve downed Flame Leviathan and Razorscale, along with a really good attempt at XT-002 Deconstructor.

Flame Leviathan (wowwiki.com)

Flame Leviathan was an unexpectedly fun fight to do because after hearing that the first part of Ulduar would be vehicle-based many guildies were dreading it from their experiences with the third phase of Malygos. There was also quite a bit of grumbling that after all our hard work getting good gear it was made mostly irrelevant in vehicles.

The fight consists of three vehicle types:

1. Siege engines (featuring a driver and a gunner)
2. Demolishers (2-seater, but I didn’t go in this one so I don’t know in detail)
3. Choppers (they’re actually motorcycles)

Siege engine

I was a gunner on the siege engine who’s role is to light up the tar left by the choppers, dps the boss, and pop a shield occasionally. There is also a side role of shooting down pyrite caches for use by demolishers as it is the only depletable resource in the fight (other than vehicle/player health). The gunner on the siege engine is the only one who has surface to air attacks.

The driver of the siege engine has to use an electroshock that interrupts some aoe effect on flame leviathan and though the siege engine normally moves quite slowly it has an ability that will increase speed for a short period, which is useful when the Flame Leviathan turns around and decides to chase you.

Demolisher

They are mostly ranged dps and have two seats.

The driver does ranged damage and has a very important role of launching the passsenger onto flame leviathan (which is sorta tricky as he is constantly moving).

The passenger also does ranged damage until they are launched onto flame leviathan, upon which they are either meant to dps the rocket turrets or heal those who are.

The good part (or bad depending on your point of view) is that the driver can’t launch the passenger anytime they feel like. The passenger must use an ability to get into the catapult first.

Chopper

While technically a two-seater, they’ll spend most of the fight going solo. These are the vehicles you’ll see zipping about the place the entire fight and they have two roles.

The first role is to lay town tar in the path of flame leviathan and the second is to pick up players who after they’ve successfully killed the rocket turrets on flame leviathan and been thrown off, or after they’ve been unsuccessfully launched onto flame leviathan. The driver of the chopper has an ability that will heal a player to full health once their a passenger.

The fight

After you kill the last of the mobs leading up to the gates blocking the way forward flame leviathan will burst through and instantly choose a random player and start chasing them while everyone else follows behind dpsing him (except choppers who have to lay tar for the siege engine gunners to light up). He’ll change who he is chasing regularly throughout the fight and that person needs to get away from him asap. Luckily it’s not too hard even though he does get faster while he’s chasing you. It can be a little challenging in the siege engine, which is the slowest of the vehicles, because you’re right behind him most of the fight but well timed speed boosts should help to avoid him getting too close.

After a bit rocket turrets will appear on top of him and start firing rockets everywhere, which is the signal for the demolisher passengers to get into their catapults and get launched onto him to destroy them. Once destroyed (people were still getting chased the entire time) everyone who was on him will be thrown off  and should be picked up and returned to their demolishers by the choppers. He will have stopped moving for a bit and this is the chance for everyone to zerg him as he takes more damage.

A few moments later he’ll start chasing someone again and you’re back to the start of waiting for the rockets and launching players onto him to destroy them.

The boss turned out to be a load of fun and not too challenging, which was unexpected considering Blizzard had said Ulduar would be hard (subsequent bosses are quite difficult). It was a nice start to what has turned out to be a very challenging instance.

Anyway, this post is already long enough so I’ll save Razorscale and XT-002 Deconstructor for another post.