Thoughts from Ulduar raid

As you may know we downed Flame Leviathan (first boss in Ulduar) yesterday.. I'd like to put down some of my impressions so that we maybe can help each other getting better at it.

We decided to stay in the same vehicles that we were in from start so that we didn't have to learn something new during the fight, this means I myself have only tried driving the Siege Engine and if some of the demolishers and/or chopper guys have something to add then plz do so

I might need some correction on the number of vehicles, but as I remember it we had:

• 2 Siege Engines (Carries 2 persons to use all abilities)
  
• 2 Demolishers (Carries 2 persons to use all abilities)
  
• 2 Choppers (Carries 1 person)

The vehicles health and dmg scales on your gear's item level, but mainly on the weapon you have in you main hand.. this means that if you have a lvl 200 item ind main hand and 219 in off hand.. It will scale from the lvl 200 item.. Also a lvl 219 two-hander is better than 2 lvl 213 one handers here. So if you have something in bank with higher lvl than your current weapon then equip it for this fight and keep your regular weapon in bags in case we go and give second boss a try

First of all we had to clear all the trash in the area before we got to the boss. The trash was pretty easy; The way we did it was to let a Siege Engine with a lot of health drive in front and take most of the beating and then demolishers (dps) just shot everybody down. The area also has some towers that needs to be killed. Most of them are called Storm Beacon and i don't really know what those do, but there are also 4 other towers:

• Tower of Nature
  
• Tower of Flames
  
• Tower of Frost
  
• Tower of Storms

If we leave 1 or more these towers up when engaging the boss it works a little like Obsidian Sanctum. We will get better loot if we succeed, but the fight is also a lot harder. We actually forgot the Tower of Nature on our first try yesterday resulting in a lot of adds looking like flowers (perrrrrrrrrty flowers ) and a miniboss also pretty much taking us down very fast. So the first many times we go there I say we down all of the towers..

In northern most part of trash area there are 2 repair stations giving our vehicles max health again. This is the first goal when we clear trash.. After we've reached those we can go back and clear the towers ind the side. North of the repair stations there's also some trash standing. DO NOT attack those until all other trash is down as this will start the boss fight as soon as these mobs are gone. So wait for raid leader to say go before we charge those.

In the air there was some flying machines which carries something called "pyrite". I'm not quite sure on that part, but it's something about the demolishers need those for boulders, choppers are the only ones who can pick them up and siege engines are the only ones who can shoot them down if I'm not mistaken. So we have to work together to make that work.

The boss fight:
Flame Leviathan has different abilities which I'm not sure of, so I will just mention one and explain the actual fight here. The ability "Flame Vents" inflicts 3,000 Fire damage every 1 second to enemies within 50 yards of the caster. Lasts 10 seconds. That's 30k dmg to all who is close to him = it's a real chopper killer and needs to be interrupted.

Positioning:
Demolishers should be at max shooting range of the boss at all time if possible.
Siege Engines should stay behind the boss at all time if possible.
Chopper are the ones on the move and will have to stay awake as they are the ones keeping us alive.

Tactics:
The demolishers is the muscle/dps and should stay out of danger as much as possible and shoot thr boss down. Siege Engines should stay close behind him to interrupt when he does "Flame Vents" - the interrupt button is nr. 2. When there's nothing to interrupt the siege engines should just spam 1 to "ram" into the boss. (Like the WG siege engines)
Flame Leviathan does random "charges"/pursues all the time - He pursues either a demolisher or siege engine for 30(?) seconds. Deadly Boss Mod is really handy here! Choppers must spill oil in front of the boss when he pursues. The oil will slow him down and give the pursued person a chance to get away. The real trick of the fight is to kite him around to avoid dmg while others shoot him down. Siege engines have some sort of rocket boost (nr. 3) to get away since they are close to the boss they should use this one as soon as they've turned away from him and the person operating the siege engine's turret should Shield up as soon as pursue starts. Demolishers doesnt have anything like that rocket boost, which is why they should stay at max range if possible.. If you're being pursued it's very hard to get around him without taking massive damage. SO, if you're in demolisher and somebody is kiting towards you, then you should move away, because you might be the next one being kited and get stuck in a corner.

If we wipe:
There's a long way to the boss from the entrance of Ulduar, but there is a teleport you can take to get back to the battlefield where the vehicles is also standing waiting for us.

Think that's pretty much it. I might have forgotten something, but hope some of the other ones from yesterday can fill me in then.

Nice one Berg I have few things to add to this

1. Choppers spill oil as you mentioned but while it slows down trash it won't slow down boss from what I remember. What you have to do here is spill oil and person operating cannon on one of the demolishers has to lit it up (shoot the spilled oil with cannon). Oil will burn and it'll deal additional damage to the boss while he's kited over burning oil pools.

2. Pyrite is used for some of your speciall attacks/abilities from what I remember so you should shoot it down and pick it up as you'll be usuing it during the fight. I might be wrong here though.

3. One person (or two if neccessary) should be launched from siege engine on the top of Leviathan. He has some turrets on him that should be taken down. Preferably melee dps should jump on catapult and then person operating demolisher must aim and shoot on the top of the boss. Then all you have to do is to walk around and try to kill those turrets. They have high hp from what I remember. Every now and then boss will 'shake you' off and you'll land on the battlefield with parachute. Here choppers must pick this person up asap and bring to the demolisher. While it's not neccessary to kill those turrets it makes this fight waaay easier as they deal some serious dmg during the fight.

4. Choppers (as mentioned above) are responsible for spilling oil in front of the boss (which should be lit up by person operating cannon on demolisher) and for collecting people who are landing on parachutes and bring them down to demolishers.

5. Demolishers - stay at range and nuke. If Leviathan pursues you - move around the room. Don't run across the room - Leviathan will cut corners and catch up with ya in no time Also lit oil pools spilled by choppers (person who operates cannon must do it) and shoot peeps on the top of Leviathan using catapult (driver will do this).

6. Siege engines - nuke boss from sides and behind. Use speed boost to run away.

As Berg mentioned - if you don't kill all towers there'll be adds during the fight.

Berg covered it nicely and I can't think of anything else atm