After a bit of searching around the Internet, I’ve found a nice warrior spec that gets Bloodthirst alongside some prot talents, and it turned out to be a very nice and easy (can’t say efficient since I’m doing about 1k dps in that spec) way to kill bosses.

Preparation

Talent spec I’m using for this is 5/31/35 with Glyph of Bloodthirst. Unfortunately taking Bloodthirst makes it impossible to take the awesome end talents in Prot, so it’s not really recommended for doing anything else. Glyph of Bloodthirst is not optional, but for the other two you can do well with any of these: Glyph of Enraged Regeneration, Glyph of Shield Wall, Glyph of Last Stand and Glyph of Heroic Strike.

As for gear, my warrior wasn’t the best geared one around when I started doing this (BoEs, crafted stuff and some parts of heroic/Naxx-10 gear) and I’ve still succeded without too many problems. If you can tank Naxx-10, you can pretty much farm yourself some nice mounts. For Onyxia, I’ve also had some fire resistance gear prepared, but I’ll talk about it later. Of course it gets a lot easier once you get more gear – what you can get right now in 3.2 with the Emblems of Conquests is completely sufficient.

Last thing you need for doing this stuff is of course a raid group. The way I do it, is I invite some guildie’s alt to a party and then convert it to a raid. After this that person can freely log out or relog to another character – their offline alt will stay in the raid. In fact, the raid group doesn’t even disband if you yourself log out, so you can send yourself some pots or stuff from another character. Also, don’t forget to turn the loot method to Free For All to skip the annoying greed/need roll windows from appearing.

And now, lets get to the bosses themselves. In this article, we’re going to visit three instances. Lets start with Zul’Gurub – a 20-man raid instance located in Stranglethorn Vale.

High Priest Thekal

Your first target in Zul’Gurub is High Priest Thekal, the Tiger boss. The fight itself isn’t very hard, but you might want to clear up his trash packs, which are annoying. While fighting them, you want to focus on the Gurubashi Axe Throwers. You need to kill them as fast as possible, because they have a chanelled 15 seconds stun (with added damage element), which might very well kill you if there are any other adds around or you are at low health. Also, if you aggro any Zulian Cubs, be sure to kill them first, as they tend to run away and aggro additional packs. Believe me, three Axe Throwers are annoying enough, 9 of them at once will get you killed in no time.

Once you get them out of your way though, the boss itself isn’t that hard. In the first phase he comes at you with his two adds (and two tigers which you’ll want to kill), and they have to die more or less together. After the first one dies you have around 15 seconds to finish the other two before the dead ones respawn with full health. Another thing to note is that one of the add is a priest and will try to heal. You need to interrupt it, which is pretty easy with Shield Bash.

The way I do it is I set the priestess (Zealot Lor’Khan as seen in the picture) as my focus and have the focus cast bar enabled, so that I can easily see when she starts casting the heal, target her by clicking the focus frame and interrupt her. I could probably make it even more easier by setting up a macro for that, but for now I’m too lazy to do it.

Once you kill the annoying trio, Thekal changes his form to a Tiger god avatar and you have to kill him again. That phase is very easy, as he doesn’t hit for much and does not have a heal of any kind. He summons some more tiger adds though, and you might want to kill them as they’re a bit annoying. One thing he does is a knockback, so remember to fight him with your back to the wall or on the hill to your right side.

Gahz’ranka

It’s the second boss worth killing in Zul’Gurub. It has a chance to drop [Tome of Polymorph: Turtle], which still might be sold for a nice price on the Auction House (or be used as a nice present for your local friendly mageling). The fight itself is easy, just remember to fight with your back to the wall again because of the knockback.

You can’t fight Gahz’ranka immediately though – first you need to complete the quest Nat’s Measuring Tape, and have to buy a [Mudskunk Lure] from him (stacks to 20, so I just bought a full stack, saves time). Then fish up 5 Zulian Mudskunks from the fishing schools in ZG, and use the Lure to summon the boss.

Bloodlord Mandokir

Mandokir, or the Raptor boss as he’s often called, is your third target in ZG. Just as with Thekal, you should clear up his room a bit so you won’t get feared into another pack. The adds aren’t very tough – first target is always the Priest, then Champions, then Raptors and save Blooddrinkers for last since they will try to life drain the other mobs in the pack. This is of course interruptable and they can be stunned.

After you have a comfortable safety zone, kill the Vilebranch Speaker and Mandokir will aggro. Take him on the temple stairs, put up Demo Shout, Thunderclap and a stack of Sunders, and start killing him. He has a raptor add with him, which you can totally ignore – in fact killing the raptor first enrages Mandokir for two minutes, which you don’t really want.

He has a bunch of abilities, most of which I totally ignored. Only one you can’t ignore is a fear, which you should get out of by using your Berserkers Rage. Other than that, keep your debuffs on the boss, use Bloodthirst every time it’s up (for me it was about 1.7k healing each time, with 4 second cooldown), and dps the boss. If you get to about half health, pop Commanding Shout, Last Stand and Enraged Regeneration to heal up, and continue. Use Shield Wall early in the fight, so it can be off cooldown later again.

That should be enough to kill the boss if you keep it long enough. Takes a few minutes, but a raptor mount is totally worth it. Oh, and don’t forget to clear the raptor packs around the boss for the pet as you go there.

Onyxia

I went to solo Onyxia simply out of pure curiousity if I can do it, and for some of the rare drops she has (mostly the Orb of Deception, since I cba camping the Dire Maul arena). It was also a test if I can solo the questline for Quel’Serrar, which requires you to forge the sword in her Flame Breath.

To do it, you need some kind of fire resistance. I’ve had 138 points of it, which was enough – 50 from [Lesser Flask of Resistance], 15 from [Drakefire Amulet] (you can skip it, but as I’ve had it, why not use it once in a while), 20 from cloak enchant (I used my [Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions] for it) and 53 from [Inferno Tempered Boots] with [Flame Armor Kit] slapped on them. While using all that silly gear I wasn’t even uncrittable with about 524 defense, but it wasn’t a problem at all. If you have a spare helmet, you can also use the [Arcanum of the Flame's Soul] availaible from Kirin Tor quartermaster for another 25 points, and [Lesser Arcanum of Resilience] for yet another 20 points of resistance on legs. The extra 45 resistance is definitely not needed for Onyxia, but it might help you later if you want to get a shot at getting Thunderfury.

Strategy is basically the same as for all the bosses – keep debuffs up, use Bloodthirst each 4 seconds, pop Shield Wall on every cooldown and LS+ER combo when low on health. The second phase, when she takes off and starts flying around the room, is the most tricky and annoying one – fortunately she still can be hit while she’s in the air, but you need to run after her to keep close (which isn’t that easy without Warbringer and in-combat Charge). She’ll also summon her whelps, but they don’t do much damage and will usually die after a few Thunderclaps, so don’t even bother wasting rage on Cleaving them. Just keep your health up with Bloodthirst and you’ll be fine.

Also, be prepared for a very long fight, as it took me over 25 minutes to kill her. She didn’t drop anything cool either, but oh well, 40 gold is still enough for my repair bills of that evening.

Attumen the Huntsman

And now the last one of soloable, mount dropping bosses. If you’ve been around in Burning Crusade, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with this guy. If not, he’s the first boss of TBC’s introductory 10-man raid dungeon, the Karazhan, which is located in Deadwind Pass. You still need [The Master's Key] to enter it, but you might be able to open the doors with high level Skeleton Keys if you’re a blacksmith, as I’m sure they can be opened by a rogue’s lockpick ability. If not, simply ask someone to open the gate for you, they don’t even have to be in your group, and can go back to their business as soon as you enter.

You need to clear all the trash mobs on your way to Attumen, because otherwise they will join the fight and wtfpwn you. They’re pretty easy, but don’t get cocky and don’t try grabbing more than one pack at a time – they can still kick your butt if there’s too many of them. Remember that they have a pretty nasty respawn timer of 30 minutes, so you need to be quick. They don’t respawn once you pull the boss and after the kill.

Once you get to the boss himself, you will see Midnight, the Attumen’s horse standing alone in the stable. Just pull her and start slowly dpsing her down. After a while Attument himself will join the fight and add a bit of damage to the fight – don’t forget to disarm him once in a while to keep the damage lower. There are two annoying boss abilities in this encounter.

First is that the horse keeps using Knockdown, doing about 1.5k damage on top of the normal hits and stunning you for 3 seconds. That makes it really important to use Bloodthirst on every cooldown to regain the lost health.

Second large annoyance is the Intangible Presence. It is used once every 30 seconds and lasts for 12 seconds. Normally you would decurse it, but as a protection warrior you just have to deal with that. It makes keeping your debuffs on targets and regaining health through Bloodthirst a bit harder than on normal fights, especially when you are on a lower level of gear and don’t have a lot of hit and avoidance.

After you bang on Midnight for a while and get her to 25%, Attument will mount her. If you can get to this part, you have almost won. He will still use all abilities from the first phase, but it won’t be so annoying as you only have one target this time. Keep disarming him, keep all the debuffs and best luck with your drop rates!

Until next time!

That will be it for now, as this post already is very late and getting long. Sometimes in the hopefully near future, there will be a part 2 of this guide with even more soloing. See you soon!

This guide is not a general strategy guide for the encounter. While you may find some overview, it’s only here so the melee classes know what is going on. If you need a full strategy guide, you can check out Tankspot’s Project Marmot, as they have lots of awesome strategy videos.

Of course, if you have any comments (including, but not limited to different strategies and differences from 10 to 25-man versions), feel free to use the comment form below and post them. I’m only a dwarf and I can make mistakes.

Also, feel free to repost this to your guild’s forums if you find the guide useful, just be sure that you abide to the Creative Commons license and provide my name as an author and a link to my site.

Kologarn

Meet Kologarn. He is very large.

Kologarn is a giant that’s guarding your passage to the second half of the instance. He’s not optional and doesn’t have any kind of a hard mode.

Positioning on this fight is extremely easy for melees. Just stand on top of your tank, right in front of the giant belt buckle. From this place you can easily attack all three targets in this fight – being Kologarn and his two arms. You can also attack them while standing to the left and right of the boss, under the arms, but I don’t really recommend that – when the arm dies, it will spawn a bunch of adds that can and most likely will want to play with you. Their Stone Nova isn’t very friendly.

The rest of the raid is going to be spread out in the back like on the screenshot above (as usual, click to enlarge it). They will have to run around to avoid Eye Beams, but Kologarn should never target anyone in melee range with them, so we don’t have to worry about that. For completeness though, we do it in a way that if you see two beams on both sides of your character, you need to run forward (preferably not into someone else) and kite them through the usually empty space in the middle.

Right Arm

The Right Arm is your main enemy in this fight. Throughout the fight he will grab one (or 3 in the 25-man version of the encounter) person and squeeze them to death, dealing a fair amount of damage first, then one-shotting the grabbed player after about 10 seconds. He releases his victims after the raid deals 80k of damage (380k on 25-man) to the arm. That means the dps needs to be focused on the arm rather than on boss himself.

After the arm dies, it will spawn some Rumble adds, that the offtank needs to pick up. They need to be AoEd. Killing the arm also damages the boss itself, taking about 15% of his HP. After destroying the arm, it will respawn 15 seconds later.

Left Arm

The Left Arm will do a Shockwave every 10-15 seconds, damaging the whole raid with an AoE. Healers will need to heal up through that, you might help them with Feint if you time it right. Other than that, simply ignore the arm, unless you want to do the Disarmed achievement.

Just as the Right Arm, this arm will also spawn Rumble adds, damage the boss when it is destroyed, and respawn.

The Body

Kologarn’s body isn’t very interesting for a dps. It does a nasty Crunch Armor debuff on the tank (reducing their armor by 20%) that might (or might not, as in our recent kills the debuff fell off rather quickly) require taunting and switching tanks, but that’s about all. Oh, and don’t forget the thing that you can fall down from the ledge, and that will kill you instantly.

None shall pass!

Killing Kologarn is very easy for a melee dps.

1. Run after your tank and stand on top of him.
2. Don’t fall down the ledge.
3. DPS the Right Arm until it dies.
4. (optional) DPS down the Rumble adds.
5. DPS Kologarn’s body until the Right Arm respawns.
6. Go back to point 3 and repeat.

Ranged DPS might remember that they should stand in the back, avoid Laser Beams and AoE the Rumble adds. The rest is the same.

One last thing – if you stand on top of the tank, your AoE abilities will hit all three targets. You need to be careful not to kill the Left Arm accidentaly, especially when your offtank is not prepared for grabbing another bunch of adds. Doing some damage to it is fine. Also near the end of the fight – usually after the Right Arm dies – you can ignore the boss (if he has more HP than the arm of course) and dps the remaining arm instead. Its death will damage the boss himself and will most likely kill him.

The Loot

On 10-man, the only thing of interest for rogues might be the [Shawl of Shattered Giant], if you haven’t got a better cloak yet. It’s similar in quality to the KT cloak from Naxx-25.

25-man version has much more interesting drops. First, [Malice], a nice mainhand sword if you’re into that. Second, [Shoulderpads of the Monolith] are also very good. He also drops [Wrathstone] if you’re a fan of “use” trinkets, and [Giant's Bane]. Of course I’m not promoting taking the gun from a hunter, but it is a nice gun if nobody else wants it.

This guide is not a general strategy guide for the encounter. While you may find some overview, it’s only here so the melee classes know what is going on. If you need a full strategy guide, you can check out Tankspot’s Project Marmot, as they have lots of awesome strategy videos.

Of course, if you have any comments (including, but not limited to different strategies and differences from 10 to 25-man versions), feel free to use the comment form below and post them. I’m only a dwarf and I can make mistakes.

Also, feel free to repost this to your guild’s forums if you find the guide useful, just be sure that you abide to the Creative Commons license and provide my name as an author and a link to my site.

XT-002 Deconstructor

Guarding the entrance into the Antechamber of Ulduar you will see XT-002 practicing in the Scrapyard area. Unlike Razorscale and Ignis, this boss is not optional at all and needs to be killed if you want to progress further. It’s a pretty straightforward fight which drops some quite nice gear for us, but first you have to deal with two trash packs on the sides of the room.

The trash packs are pretty easy – you just need to remember that the two Parts Recovery Technicians cast the annoying Defense Matrix ability that reduces your damage to laughable amounts, so they should be stunned or kited out of the shell by your tanks. After they are dead it’s really simple – just kill everything else and watch the XB-488 Disposalbots, as they explode when low on health dealing a bit of AoE damage.

Rinse and repeat on the other side, let your engineer dismantle the corpses for some vendor trash and prepare for the boss himself.

Positioning

In our raids we usually tank the XT-002 facing the stairs in the middle, with raid split in two to three groups in the room (we usually keep them spread out and fall back to the healer when a Tantrum comes) and melees tending to themselves behind the boss. You can see details of the positioning on the screenshot below.

One note – in our raids, we only offtank the Pummeler’s in the marked spots on the 25-man version – in our 10-mans our main tank tanks them and the boss just fine. That makes it possible for our second tank to go and do some damage with a dps offspec, but if you’re a melee dps that likes to do AoE damage, you need to be aware of not pulling the adds.

As a melee dps be sure to activate your distance finder (using DBM it’s /distance, Big Wigs doesn’t have any means to activating it manually as far as I know) and set it to 10 yards – if you don’t have a lot of melees you should spread around the back and the sides, so that there’s no other players in a 10 yard radius. That makes it sure that you’re the only one taking damage from the Light Bombs, so you don’t have to run away and can keep dpsing.

Update: on our recent kills, we use a different positioning, as shown on the screenshot below. The same rules apply as above – split your ranged and spread them around, but this time, the tank takes the boss to the side (doesn’t matter which one) and positions him between two scrap piles. This disables these two piles from spawning any adds at all, and you have more time to handle what spawns from the distant ones – making the fight much much easier.

Phase 1

In this phase you will be dpsing the boss until he gets to the 75/50/25% mark. The boss, besides hitting the tank, does three abilities:

• Light Bomb, which is dot on you that deals damage to you and everyone in 8 yard radius – if you’re lucky and have enough space around you, you can stay and dps, otherwise run out to an empty space or get rid of it with Cloak of Shadows.
• Gravity Bomb – this ability does not deal damage immediately, but after 9 seconds it will explode, pulling everyone within 12 yards and dealing quite a lot of damage. Obviously it’s a bad idea to pull a healer to you, and even worse to do that to the tank, so just as with the other bomb – either run away to a safe spot or Cloak it.
• Tympanic Tantrum – this is an AoE that will damage everyone in the raid for a fair amount of damage that needs to be healed through (especially if there are people with either Gravity or Light bombs). As a rogue, just stay on the boss and use your Feint to save your healers a bit of work. They will most certainly appreciate it.

As a bit of advice – we only tried that once so far, but if you’re doing the boss on the hard mode (that is enabled by killing his heart), you do not want to Cloak the Gravity Bombs at all, as they leave a nasty void zone on the floor.

Phase 2

The second phase begins with each 25% of damage to the boss. He will shut down for 30 seconds and his heart will pop out. Everyone should go all out on the heart – the damage you do on it is increased, and the XT-002′s HP will go down by the amount you deal to his heart.

Be warned though – if you destroy the heart completely, the boss will enter hard mode, healing up to full health (with his HP pool buffed at that) and gaining a significant damage buff. If you don’t want him to do this, be sure to stop the dps before the heart goes down.

During these 30 seconds, the boss will summon three types of adds from the scrap piles on the sides of the room. After the phase finishes or just before (that depends on which pile the adds are spawning from), all dps including melees should break off and help clearing them. The adds that are summoned are completely random.

• XM-024 Pummeler (looks like your typical mechanical mob) – these will be picked up by the main tank or the offtanks and left alone. You can dps them down if you want to, but they should not pose a large threat to anyone. Be aware that they have a frontal cleave as well as a 10 yard AoE, so better keep out of the way if you can.
• XE-321 Boombot (again, your typical big walking bomb) – melees should keep out of them, as they explode for nasty amounts of damage, usually killing anything that’s close. They will be dealt with by the ranged dps, possibly when they are close to the Scrapbots – they kill them when they explode and it’s not only useful, but also an achievement.
• XS-013 Scrapbot (small adds coming in large groups) – these need to be killed before they come in melee range of the boss. If you allow them to come close, XT-002 will heal himself for 1% of his health for each Scrapbot he can reach and consume. They can and should be slowed by your mages and hunters, but any dps that sees them close should run to them (being aware of not running close to Boombots or Pummelers) and help killing them – especially if the ranged dps are busy with another pack.

When the 30 second stun wears off, the boss goes back to the first phase again. Clear off the remaining adds and return to dpsing the boss.

Another thing which is nice to be aware of – if you do enough damage to the heart, it’s possible for XT-002 to enter another heart phase almost immediately, skipping most of the Phase 1. While this is usually a good thing due to less Tantrums and Bombs doing raid damage, be sure that you’re on the ball with clearing the Scrapbots – you definitely don’t want him to get his HP back up. Also it’s very possible to kill him while he’s still in the last heart phase.

The Shinies

After you finish playing with the big robot, you get a chance to grab some of his fancy toys. Unfortunately it’s not much, but hey, it’s always something.

The 10-man version drops [Treacherous Shoulderpads] and [Fluxing Energy Coils] (currently the best in slot bracers, at least for Combat) if you can manage doing the hard mode.

25-man version got only one item for us, but it’s the [Golem-Shard Sticker] – a very nice offhand dagger and a solid upgrade if you’re not doing the hard modes yet.

This guide is not a general strategy guide for the encounter. While you may find some overview, it’s only here so the melee classes know what is going on. If you need a full strategy guide, you can check out Tankspot’s Project Marmot, as they have lots of awesome strategy videos.

Of course, if you have any comments (including, but not limited to different strategies and differences from 10 to 25-man versions), feel free to use the comment form below and post them. I’m only a dwarf and I can make mistakes.

Also, feel free to repost this to your guild’s forums if you find the guide useful, just be sure that you abide to the Creative Commons license and provide my name as an author and a link to my site.

Ignis the Furnace Master

Ignis is second of the optional bosses after Flame Leviathan. Just like Razorscale, you don’t need to kill him if you want to get to the Tier 8 dropping bosses quicker. It’s also one of the few fights that not only aren’t melee unfriendly, but are also annoying to casters. That’s a nice change, isn’t it?

Before you get to the boss, you have to deal with some mobs. These are the first real “trash” mobs you will encounter in Ulduar, and man, they are so pissed about us calling their kind “trash” for so many years.

Molten Colossus

It’s a bit weird having a strategy for something else than the bosses, isn’t it? Well, taking down these guys is much more easier if you know how to do it, so look at the picture linked below first.

The colossi do a long range AoE earthquake that not only deals damage, but also interrupts casting. It can be only avoided by being out of their line of sight. Tanks will have to pull them a bit more to the center of the corridor to still be in range of heals. Ranged dps and healers will stand around the corners and try not to have more than one of the mobs at once in sight. Melee dps? Well, if you’re a melee dps here, you should stand on top of the tanks and hope that your healers like you (or stand with the ranged and shoot/throw some stuff at mobs, chicken). ;] Additionally, if you’re a rogue, save your cloak for when you get the pyroblast debuff – it’s the second most annoying ability there.

After killing the colossi, your raid will gain a debuff (or two debuffs in the 25-man version) called Unquenchable Flames. This ticks for 8% of your HP, and then after 5 seconds jumps to another raid member. It cannot be cleansed, cloaked, dispelled or ice blocked (Blizzard hotfixed it a while ago to make sure of this) – the only way to deal with it is to run into the water before Ignis.

Blizzard removed the above debuff few weeks ago (I think in one of the 3.1.x little patches), so it’s no longer an issue to deal with.

More monsters

There will be six four (again, that changed with the removal of Unquenchable Flame) more packs of mobs before the boss, but fortunately they aren’t as deadly. The Forge Constructs are just your usual trash that do a charge on a random player once in a while, but the Magma Ragers are a bit more tricky. They have an ability called Superheated Winds – when you see them casting that, move away quickly. This ability creates a tornado that will deal damage (3k per tick) and knock you back, similar to what the tornadoes at Zul’jin in Zul’Aman did. They will not move randomly like the Zul’Aman ones, though. Instead, they lock on to a random player and follow him for a while before disappearing – that player has to kite them away. Don’t run into them, avoid your raid members, and most importantly, don’t get between a wall and a tornado.

Before fighting Ignis, don’t forget to run into the water to dispel the Unquenchable Flames.

Ignis the Furnace Master

The boss himself is a very easy fight from melees point of view. Unless you have no caster dps at all, all you going to do is stand at the back of the boss and attack him until he’s dead. I will talk a bit about his abilities, though, so you will know what’s happening around you.

Flame Jets

First ability that the boss will use during the fight is the Flame Jets. This will deal some damage, put a damaging dot on the players, and also interrupt and lock the spellcasting, so your healers and dps need to be aware of that and stop casting anything just before. For melees this is just a minor annoyance – if you’re a rogue, feel free to remove the dot with your Cloak of Shadows just to save some effort for your healers. Flame Jets can also be resisted, so a Fire Resistance Aura from your paladins will be useful.

Scorches

Ignis will cast a Scorch every 20 seconds. This ability leaves a huge flaming area on the ground in front of him, which will deal heavy damage to everyone standing in it. There are a few two strategies, and where they differ is the placement of the fire patches. In my guild, we’re using the strategy pictured below.

There is also an alternate positioning strategy which has three Scorch positions on one side. It does not really matter which one you will use – they both should work well.

Constructs

Every 30 seconds Ignis will summon an Iron Construct. They have to be offtanked and dragged/stunned/rooted in the Scorch patches to get 10 stacks of the Heat debuff and become Molten. Then the offtank will drag them into one of the water pools on the sides, when they become Brittle for 15 seconds. In this 15 seconds you have to deal 5k damage with a single ability to shatter the construct and destroy it. Destroying them also removes the stacks of the Strength of the Creator buff Ignis gains when they are active. The buff increases damage done, so you don’t want to have more than 2 adds alive at the same time.

Shattering the Molten Constructs is the job for your moonkins, mages or warlocks. While it is possible for melee classes to deal 5k damage in a single blow, the mob will explode when you do that. This deals about 18k – 22k damage, and should be avoided if you can.

One last thing to watch out with the Constructs – they clear their aggro list when they become Molten. Your tanks will probably pick them up, but be sure you are careful with using AoE abilities near them.

Slag Pot

Once in a while, Ignis will charge a random raid member and place them in the Slag Pot he carries on his belt. This will do significant damage and will kill the player if he’s not healed through (Cloak of Shadows saves you from some damage, but it does not free you nor last long enough – it’s better to save it for Flame Jets). If you are still alive after 10 seconds in the pot, you are released under the boss with a haste buff for 10 seconds.

The loot

After a while of dealing with his abilities and constructs you will finally kill him. The best item you can get from him – [Cindershard Ring] – comes from the 25-man version, along with the [Flamestalker Boots].

10-man version got the short end of the stick here and the interesting drops consist of the [Gloves of Smoldering Touch], a sidegrade to Tier 7.5 gloves with haste instead of hit rating.

This guide is not a general strategy guide for the encounter. While you may find some overview, it’s only here so the melee classes know what is going on. If you need a full strategy guide, you can check out Tankspot’s Project Marmot, as they have lots of awesome strategy videos.

Of course, if you have any comments (including, but not limited to different strategies and differences from 10 to 25-man versions), feel free to use the comment form below and post them. I’m only a dwarf and I can make mistakes.

Also, feel free to repost this to your guild’s forums if you find the guide useful, just be sure that you abide to the Creative Commons license and provide my name as an author and a link to my site.

Razorscale

After defeating Flame Leviathan, you have access to the next three bosses. Killing Razorscale is optional and not needed for progressing further inside, so she can be skipped if you like. Still, a boss is a boss and shinies are shinies (and she has some nice drops), so let’s take her out!

There are no trash mobs on the way to Razorscale. After leaving the Flame Leviathan’s arena you have to turn right and there she is, flying right above the patch of ground. You can safely set up camp downstairs – the fight doesn’t start until you talk to one of the NPCs.

Bringing the boss down

For the first part of the fight, Razorscale will be flying above the orange circle on the floor, and in the back there will be a bunch of adds coming out of the Mole Machines (similar to what the Dark Irons use during Brewfest). There are three types of them, and they all have to be dealt with.

• Dark Rune Watcher (a small iron dwarf) – this is a caster mob with two abilities. Lightning Bolt is mostly harmless, but the Chain Lightning can deal a lot of damage if it jumps between a few players, so it should be interrupted (spreading out and keeping players more than 10 yards apart also helps). The Watchers should always die first. You can use Mind-Numbing poison on one of your weapons, which can help with the interrupts, but it’s not really necessary.
• Dark Rune Guardian (big iron dwarf) – a melee mob, nothing special. Just kill them.
• Dark Rune Sentinel (a big vrykul) – this is a mob that will come separately from the other two. It does a really nasty whirlwind, so when it spawns, the offtank will taunt it to the center and the ranged dps should burn him quickly. Melees should definitely stay away, as the whirlwind will one-shot you.

The 10-man version requires only one tank for the adds, but on the 25-man you will want to have two of them on both of the sides of the circle (with dps and healers split evenly).

Throughout the fight, Razorscale will shoot players with two types of fireballs. One is a single ball of flame and the player should be just healed in case she shoots him again (usually two of these in a row are a kill). The second one is called Devouring Flame and it leaves a blue ball on the floor, which spreads into an area of blue fire after a few seconds. Standing in the fire will of course kill you very quickly, but you knew that already, didn’t you. :)

Fortunately there is a way to deal with the flames. Razorscale will shoot it on the person closest to her, so we just make our offtank stay inside the orange circle and tank the Sentinels there, and the rest of the raid should stay outside of the circle all the time. This makes the fight a lot easier. After she is chained for the first time and flies back up, she will be flying more to the northeast, so you have to adjust your position accordingly. You can view the positions we use if you click the image below.

Also you have to remember one thing. See that edge of the platform over there? Yes, you can jump off it and fall down to your death.

Harpoons and chains

While the raid fights with the adds, the NPCs will repair the harpoons. The raid should have one person assigned to breaking off from the mobs and clicking them. In our raids that is usually me, since I’m the only melee dps, and it saves me some damage from the adds.

There are 2 or 4 harpoons, depending on whether you’re doing the 10 or 25-man version. When one (or three on 25-man) of them is repaired, I run up and click it. Then I wait for confirmation on vent that all of the Watchers and Sentinels are dead before activating the last one. This helps us with not taking the damage from the adds while we burn the boss down.

When all of the harpoons are active, the boss will be chained and brought to the floor for 30 seconds. All dps should drop whatever they are doing and dps Razorscale like they mean it. If you have Heroism/Bloodlust or cooldowns it’s also a good time to use them. After the stun ends, she will breath fire in front of her to destroy the harpoons and fly up – then it’s back to the first phase with the adds. As with all the dragons in this game – don’t stand in front of her when that happens. When she breaks the chains, she will also do an AoE knockback – you can try to avoid it with Killing Spree if you haven’t used it before.

If you have Heroism availaible, you will probably be able to burn her down quickly enough to get the Quick Shave achievement (burn her down to less than 75% in the first stun, then to 50% on the second), but it is not necessary to do it in order to finish the fight.

Killing the dragon

After you deal enough damage to Razorscale and bring her to 50% of her health (this usually takes two or three stuns), she will stay on the ground. From there the fight is a simple tank and spank. Clear up any adds you have left and focus on the boss. The tanks will kite her around the room, switching to avoid the Fuse Armor debuff.

All you have to do in this phase is follow the boss and kill her – stay in the back, as she still breathes fire and you still have to avoid the fire patches from Devouring Flame, but this is not a big problem anymore. You do have to kill her relatively quick though, since the fire damage she does will increase in time.

The loot

Razorscale drops quite a lot of pieces of nice loot for rogues, especially for an easy optional boss. On the 10-man you can get [Treads of the Invader] (comparable to Dawnwalkers from 25-man Naxx) and [Band of Draconic Guile], as well as [Razorscale Talon], which is a nice upgrade from the Naxx-25 mainhand sword.

The 25-man version you can get [Proto-hide Leggins] and an offhand sword, the [Remorse] – another nice upgrade from previous tier of raids.

This guide is not a general strategy guide for the encounter. While you may find bits of an overview, it’s only here so the melee classes know what will happen. If you need a full strategy guide, you can check out Tankspot’s Project Marmot, as they have lots of awesome strategy videos.

Of course, if you have any comments (including, but not limited to different strategies and differences from 10 to 25-man versions), feel free to use the comment form below and post them. I’m only a dwarf and I can make mistakes.

Also, feel free to repost this to your guild’s forums if you find the guide useful, just be sure that you abide to the Creative Commons license and provide my name as an author and a link to my site.

Note: as this is a vehicle fight, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a melee class or not. This will be more of a general guide than the next ones. Also Tankspot unfortunately doesn’t have a video for it yet.

Flame Leviathan

As you enter the instance into the Staging Grounds, you can see all types of different machinery scattered around. Everyone should find one that they like, and there should be enough of them for everyone in the raid – 2 of each type or 5 of each in 25-man version.

When you start the encounter by talking to the NPCs, the vehicles become active and you can enter them – they’re just like the ones used in Lake Wintergrasp, with a few different details. It does not really matter who gets into which one, you just have to know one thing – the health pool of the vehicles depends on the driver’s items iLevel. So if you have one person geared with mostly Naxx-10 gear, and one with mostly Naxx-25, the latter one should do the driving and use the machine first to get the HP boost. How to know your gear’s iLevels? Either look on Wowhead or Armory, or you can install an addon called RatingBuster, which is awesome and you should have it anyway.

Salvaged Siege Engine – driver

You are the “tank” for now. The important thing is to not to waste your Electroshock and Steam Rush abilities and leave them when you are in trouble. The Electroshock deals quite a low damage compared to everything else, so wasting it on mobs is generally not a good idea. Also there is a huge bug present – you can fall through the floor if you use Steam Rush while on a slope. We did that once and we had to wait until the Siege Engine respawned.

Salvaged Siege Engine – turret

The Siege Engine passenger’s job is to shoot everything that moves until it stops moving. You have two abilities for that (an anti-air rocket and a cannon), and an additional one, which shields your whole vehicle. Save the shield for when you are in trouble, otherwise focus on shooting things. Targetting can be a bit tricky, especially if your driver is moving around, but you will have enough practice on the trash mobs before the boss.

Salvaged Demolisher – driver

You’re the main assault force here. As above, shoot stuff until it’s dead, and stay out of trouble during that. Do know that you have two types of ranged attacks – Hurl Pyrite uses ammo and leaves a stacking DoT on the target – it ticks for nice amounts of damage, so it should be refreshed before it drops. Targetting while in this vehicle is a bit annoying, as you have to turn the whole thing around. You can also shoot your passenger onto the boss to let him stun him for a while, but we’ll talk about that later.

Salvaged Demolisher – passenger

You’re the ammunition loader for the vehicle. Grab barrels of Pyrite with your grappling hook to replenish the demolisher’s resources, use the speed boost if the boss is following your vehicle, and be sure to load yourself into the catapult to let your driver shoot you when the time is right. In the meantime, focus on igniting the tar with your cannon and shooting stuff.

Salvaged Chopper – driver

The most important ability of the Chopper is dropping tar. It will stay on the floor for a while and slow mobs down, and it can be ignited by the Demolishers cannons, making it deal damage. Other than that, ride around and stay out of trouble. In the boss fight, you will also have to drive around and pick up people that are catapulted to take out the Flame Leviathan’s turrets and deliver them back to their Demolisher.

The Iron Dwarf army

You can start the instance in two ways. Talking to Lore-Keeper Norgannon activates the orbital defenses of the boss, so he will start on the hard mode unless you destroy the towers. Talking to Brann Bronzebeard sets the easy mode on from the start.

After you start the encounter, the vehicles will become active and you will be able to use them. Before you lies a whole army of Iron Dwarfs, waiting for you to come and destroy them. So, go and do exactly that. :]

There are a few types of mobs here. If you encounter a big Ulduar Colossus, be sure that your Siege Engines are close and ready to use their interrupt if they start casting their Ground Slam ability, as that does some nasty AoE damage. Rest of the mobs you should just kill with whatever weapons you like.

You’ll also find two types of buildings here – the small towers are spawning endless amounts of Iron Dwarves, so they should be destroyed as you drive through. Destroying the big towers is optional, and leaving them intact enables the hard mode of Flame Leviathan, unless you started the instance with talking to Brann. Each tower that is left adds additional things that can happen in the boss encounter, and also increases the boss’ HP pool by 50% each. This buff actually stacks, so with all four of them the fight gets quite longer, and there’s a lot less room to manouver due to the orbital defense systems.

As you advance through the gauntlet and reach the Flame Leviathan’s arena, you can use the repair platforms placed on the sides to repair your vehicles (don’t do this if you want to do the Unbroken achievement) – you just drive through them to get your HP back to full. There is only one more pack of mobs to kill, and shortly after that the boss enters the area through the large doors in the back.

Before engaging them, make sure that you have the right people as the passengers of the Demolishers. While you can theoretically switch during the fight itself, it is very likely that the players will die, so it’s not really recommended and should be avoided.

The boss itself

Right after you’re done with the last pack, your Choppers should immediately drop the tar in front of the doors and you should ignite it with cannon fire. This starts the damage on the boss when he breaks through the door and activates the encounter.

At all times, the boss will follow one of the Siege Engines or the Demolishers. The person driving that vehicle should kite the tank around the room (trying to be near the walls most of the time), ideally dragging him through the ignited tar on the floor – it slows the boss down and deals nice damage as well. One tricky thing is the corners – try to use your speed boost while turning (this is harder for a Siege Engine, as their Steam Rush is basically a charge – their passenger can use the shield just when turning), because the boss will cut the corner and he has a good chance of reaching you with his Battering Ram.

All free Siege Engines should be around the back of the Leviathan, ready to interrupt his channeled AoE spell (called Flame Vents) with their Electroshocks. There’s no reason to try and define the order of the interrupts, as the Electroshock will be off cooldown before the next one, so just use it on the boss as quickly as possible. Also before the boss changes targets, be sure to stay back for a moment (or even turn around and scatter in different direction about 5 seconds before the switch), so that he doesn’t turn around and immediately ram you.

Choppers can try to do some damage with their Sonic Horn, but it has a lower range than the Flame Vents, so you have to be really careful with that, as the choppers are very delicate. Your main job is to keep the tar on the floor, ideally on the path of the boss, and then your second job is to pick up people thrown to kill the turrets.

Demolishers need to stay in the back to avoid unnecessary damage from Flame Vents (unless the boss targets you – then you kite him like a Siege Engine would), and just shoot the boss with what they can. Shooting with your main cannon works well, but the Hurl Pyrite ability leaves a stacking DoT on the target, so try to keep it up. In order to do this your passenger needs to keep shooting down pyrite barrels from the air and grabbing them.

Killing the turrets

Throughout the fight, the boss is gaining stacks of “Gathering Speed”. When he has about 5 stacks of it, you should throw a player (or more) from the Demolishers on the boss – they have to destroy the Leviathan’s turrets, which will reset the buff and stun him for a while.

Be sure that you choose right people for this job. Once you’re on the boss (I’m talking 10-man here), you have one turret in your melee range, and other at some distance. You cannot move from one spot to another, so you need to throw either two melee classes, or one ranged dps. If they can also heal themselves, it’s awesome, but being there does not deal too much damage.

On 25 man there are 4 turrets to kill, we generally do it by using 3 casters and one healer (he can reach all 3 of them). Another thing to remember is to time the throwing. You don’t actually choose where the player will land, so if you throw two at the same time (or shortly later) there’s a good chance that one of them will miss the boss and die on the floor. Just wait with catapulting the next person until the previous one has landed succesfully.

After all of the turrets are dead, the boss is stunned, and the people that were on top of him are dropped on the floor. The Choppers should be on the move to pick them up and deliver them back to their Demolishers – do it fast, as being outside of a vehicle in this fight for too long (too long being more than about 10 seconds here) is not a good idea at all. Meanwhile, the rest of the raid uleashes damage on the boss, and later resumes the standard kite, shoot and interrupt cycle.

The shinies

After a while he will be dead, and we rogues can grab some nice stuff from him. In the 10-man version he drops [Pyrite Infuser] ( a very nice trinket with lots of hit rating and an Attack Power proc), and also a [Kinetic Ripper], which is not bad, but not that great either. Still you might want it if you need a fast offhand and you didn’t have any luck on the Webbed Deaths in Naxx. On the 25-man version we can get [Mechanist's Bindings] and [Rising Sun].

Additionally, if you kill him on 10-man with some towers up, you’ll get Emblems of Conquest instead of the Valor ones, and you have a chance to get [Twirling Blades] if you leave all of them. On 25 you have a chance to get the best main hand (unfortunately again it’s a fist weapon) – [Golden Saronite Dragon], and leaving the towers working increases the amount of badges you’ll receive from the boss.

Oh, and if you have an engineer in the raid, don’t forget to scrap the Leviathan’s remains – you’ll get a nice amount of Saronite Bars, Eternals and other engineering supplies (including a chance for some of the expensive vendor parts for the chopper mount).

The reason for that is simply that I write what works for me. After raiding as a rogue for about a year now, I found that our beloved developers just love to design fights that are (for lack of better word – especially one that isn’t considered expletive) unfriendly to melee classes. These guides are designed to show how to deal with that, and “bring your ranged dps alt” is not considered a valid strategy here.

You can also expect a bit of the general strategy here (you should be familiar with a whole encounter, even though you will most likely see the bosses feet most of the time), as well as some info about the achievements tied with them. The guide will also focus on the 10-man versions of the fights, and I will be trying to point things out if they change drastically on the 25-man. There will be also mention of the shinies we get for killing the bosses, but these loot lists will be strictly limited to rogue loot.

The whole instance is located in Storm Peaks, with an entrance between the Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning. On Deathwing-EU, which is a PvP realm, using the stone or the associated flightpath is very likely to get you killed by the opposing faction – so I tend to use the flightpath in Bouldercrag’s Refuge. It’s not that far away from the instance, there’s a repair vendor and a mailbox if I need them, and it has a huge advantage of practically nobody going there.

The instance itself is very large, as you would expect from something built by Titans themselves. Fortunately for us, there are teleporters located near the bosses, so you can use them and save a lot of travel time. You can also mount within in the first area of Ulduar – so you can summon your tundra mammoth (if you have access to one) and let people repair on the spot. You won’t be able to mount it when you reach the later parts of the instance, but you can always use the teleporters to go back to the starting point and mount/repair there, or simply use a repair bot.

Update: the repair/reagent vendor in the Expedition Camp area no longer despawns, making it easy to repair while running back.

The instance consists of 14 boss encounters total, including the hard mode only boss. Below you will find links to other parts of my guide (obviously they will be added later when I actually kill the bosses myself), and also links to Tankspot’s Project Marmot, which has lots of awesome videos with very well explained strategies. I strongly encourage everyone to watch them before doing the fights – they are made by the tanks, but are targeted at entire raids and talk about general strategy for defeating each boss. Normally I would link to some other site like Bosskillers, but their guides are not that great anymore (and quite wrong in a few ways) and the site is full of gold sellers adds.

The Siege of Ulduar

• Flame Leviathan
• Razorscale (Tankspot video)
• Ignis the Furnace Master (Tankspot video)
• XT-002 Deconstructor (Tankspot video)

The Antechamber of Ulduar

• Iron Council (Tankspot video)
• Kologarn (Tankspot video)
• Auriaya (Tankspot video)

The Keepers of Ulduar

• Hodir (Tankspot video)
• Thorim (Tankspot video)
• Freya (Tankspot video)
• Mimiron (Tankspot video)

The Descent into Madness

• General Vezax (Tankspot video)
• Yogg-Saron (Tankspot video)
• Algalon the Observer

Check out the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSbEr5ar0Zo – we’re going to be heroes again. It’s about time, ain’t it? And there’s an older video as well, not that good, but still nice - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlIonr1mU1o

This is a post I compiled for our guild forums, but I think it may be of some use here as well. Since it’s a bit long, check the changes after the read more link!

Changes in 3.1

Here’s a list of changes that deal with our class. You can read the full changes on MMO-Champion here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=49149.0

• Deadly Poison: The amount of damage this poison generates from the rogue’s attack power has been increased from 8% per application to 12%.
• Deadly Throw: Missile speed increased.
• Instant Poison: Redesigned to have its chance to be applied based on the speed of the weapon (frequency-based).
• Shiv: This ability can no longer generate a critical strike, and the poisons it applies cannot be critical strikes either.
• Tricks of the Trade: Will now begin following the first damaging attack.
• Wound Poison: Redesigned to have its chance to be applied based on the speed of the weapon (frequency-based).

Assassination

• Hunger For Blood: No longer stacks. Damage bonus changed to 15% for a single application. Requires a bleed effect active on the rogue’s target. No longer removes bleeds from the rogue. Now costs 15 energy and lasts for 60 seconds.
• Master Poisoner: Now also increases the bonus to apply Deadly Poison when Envenom is used by an additional 15/30/45%.

Combat

• Adrenaline Rush cooldown reduced to 3 minutes.
• Killing Spree: Now also increases all damage done by the rogue while active by 20%.
• Savage Combat improved to 2/4% increased damage against poisoned targets.
• Lightning Reflexes reduced to 3 ranks for 2/4/6% dodge and 4/7/10% melee haste.

Subtlety

• Shadow Dance now opens a new action bar when used.
• Master of Subtlety: The amount of time remaining on the damage bonus for this talent is now displayed.

Glyph changes

• Glyph of Adrenaline Rush: Now increases duration by 5 seconds.
• Glyph of Backstab: Now increases remaining duration on Rupture by 2 seconds each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 seconds.
• Glyph of Cloak of Shadows: While Cloak of Shadows is active, you take 40% less physical damage.
• Glyph of Crippling Poison: Poison chance bonus increased to 20%.
• Glyph of Deadly Throw: Increases the movement reduction by 10%.
• Glyph of Fan of Knives: Increases the damage done by Fan of Knives by 20%.
• Glyph of Hunger for Blood: Increases the bonus damage from Hunger for Blood by 3%.
• Glyph of Killing Spree: Reduces the cooldown on Killing Spree by 45 seconds.
• Glyph of Mutilate: Reduces the cost of Mutilate by 5 energy.
• Glyph of Pick Lock: Now reduces cast time by 100%.
• Glyph of Sap: Increases duration by 20 seconds.
• Glyph of Shadow Dance: Increases the duration of Shadow Dance by 4 seconds.
• Glyph of Sprint: No longer reduces the duration.
• Glyph of Tricks of the Trade: Your Tricks of the Trade grants an additional 10% bonus damage to your target.

Items and various stuff

• Players level 40 and higher will now be able to visit their trainer to pay a one-time fee and access the dual talent specialization feature.
• Armor Penetration Rating: All classes now receive 25% more benefit from Armor Penetration Rating.
• All flasks now last 1 hour. To compensate, all flask recipes will provide 2 flasks for the same material cost.
• Northrend flasks will be converted to mixtures. This includes the Flask of Stoneblood, Flask of Pure Mojo, Flask of Endless Rage, and Flask of the Frost Wyrm. Mixtures can create 2 flasks of the corresponding type. This allows players who stockpiled Northrend flasks to convert them to the new system without any loss.
• Due to significant talent tree revisions, all players will have their talent points reimbursed. Several new spells and abilities have been added for select classes. Players will need to visit their class trainer to learn new spells.

New talent specs

With the addition of the dual spec system, it’s not a bad idea to combine some useful specs in one place with the changes. So, there we go.

Combat

One of these three (weapon specs can be obviously changed from CQC to Sword spec if you like). Less filler points (down to 1) is welcome – unless you wanted to have two weapon specializations. Then you’re screwed, as Blizzard devs don’t like that.

15/51/5
7/51/13
18/51/2

Glyphs: Slice and Dice (could be replaced by Killing Spree or Adrenaline Rush), Sinister Strike, Rupture

Assasination

Not many changes here as well – just take Master Poisoner instead of Turn the Tables.

51/13/7

Glyphs: Hunger for Blood, Mutilate, Rupture. Note that the HfB glyph is from the random dropped recipes and might not be availaible to you for now. The Mutilate one is learned from the trainer, though.

Subtlety

Even though it’s theoretically the best dps one, you might not want to have that as your primary spec, as it is extremely annoying everywhere outside a perfectly stacked raid group.

8/20/43

Glyphs: Eviscerate, SnD, Rupture

Other things you might want to check out

Prepare for the patch! Here’s a bunch of other info that might help you.

Instance guides

Check out the boss guides at StratFu – there are strats, videos and all things there, including a map of the instance so nobody gets lost.

Gear from Ulduar

As usual, ShadowPanther.net is getting updated with the new gear. There’s a big loot list on MMO-Champion as well. Unfortunately none of this is the whole item list, as the PTR didn’t have all the bosses, so expect both of the resources to be updated on the way.

Consumables

Do not show up in a raid without a flask (flasks are preferred, since you will die. A lot.) and a food buff (using feasts set up by your friendly dwarves is fine, but expect us to randomly “forget” to do that, in order to check if you have your own). We may slack in Naxx without them, but that will not be an acceptable behavior in Ulduar. As well, do have your own poison supplies (including Anesthetic Poison), be repaired and all that stuff. Bandages and healing potions included.

The above might not be fully true for you, my dear reader, as you might miss a friendly dwarf to randomly “forget” putting down feasts, but I decided to leave that here anyway. You still should use consumables, though.

Addons

Update them, especially Omen and Big Wigs/Deadly Boss Mods – you don’t want to be left without them before the instance’s entrance, do you?

Don’t forget that the WoWMatrix application is broken right now, and both the Curse client and WoW Interface addon manager are not really comparable to WM, so be prepared to downloading all the addons from the websites by hand.

Here’s a little guide. It took me 12 minutes to get 16 flowers, and that’s with killing some mobs that I didn’t need to kill at all and making screenshots, so it can easily be reduced to 10 minutes. The flower count is a bit random, but if you run through the whole instance, you shouldn’t have less than 10 – and that’s 1500 very easy reputation points.

You can probably do the similar thing if you’re not a rogue – the mobs in normal Underbog are level 65 elites, and when you’re a level 80, you have to run straight through them to get them aggroed. And even if you do, it’s really easy to kill them even if you’re not a prot warrior. Just try not to pull a whole room. ;]

Detailed information after the cut, just don’t laugh at my sloppy, mouse-drawn arrows. ;]

Step 1 – Preparation

1. Check your AH for both Hibiscuses and Fertile Spores. People still level in Zangarmarsh, so there’s a chance you can get some for the start.
2. Make sure you’re at least friendly with the Sporeggar folks, as it’s the requirement for the turn-in quests.
3. Check WoW Reputation Calculator to see how many flowers you need – it shows how many times you have to complete the turn-in, so just multiply that by 5. I wish the author would update the site for Northrend reputations, it was a massive help for me back in TBC, and to be honest, it still is.
4. Make sure you set the instance difficulty at normal – no need to make things harder than they could be, we’re not in a contest who can solo a level 70 heroic here.

When you’re all set, make your way to Zangarmarsh and lets start!

Step 2 – Before the Nagas

This is the first half of the instance. As I said before, you can stealth through, or you can just run around and kill whatever attacks you. This doesn’t really matter, it just makes the run few minutes longer – and if you choose to kill mobs, they have a chance to drop additional Hibiscuses. They have about 25% drop rate though, so it’s your call if you want to bother with that.

After the first two mobs, you arrive at the pack of 3 little elementals (they look a bit dead here, as apparently they didn’t like me taking pictures). Look to your right – there’s a chance that there will be a flower spawned in the back of the corridor. Don’t forget to look around the big room for them – there should be at least 2 more, and they can be pretty hidden sometimes.

After getting what you can from the big room, go on the left where the Bog Giant is walking, and follow the corridor around. There’s a patrol behind the ramp, and a few more Hibiscuses on the way. You should be back in more or less the same place when you do that, so go up the ramp and to the first boss. He has two mobs guarding the entrance – just walk through them and onto the bridge. There’s a chance for some more flowers spawning on the next “island”, so keep your eyes out.

This is the end of the road if you don’t have stealth and sap. There’s usually a Hibiscus behind the Giant on the right, so you should now have about 10 of them, maybe more if you chose to kill stuff. You can now go back to the entrance, reset the instance and start again, or you can pop stealth and go on.

Step 3 – Mrglglglgl…oh wait, they’re not Murlocs.

Ready to continue? Pop stealth and avoid the two Nagas patrolling the bridge. The two Sentries at the top see through stealth, but you can easily Distract and Sap them, or pull both to the side and kill them. I prefer to Sap, because I’m not sure at what exact moment the second boss comes up. If you stealth all the way, you can safely jump from his platform, and he will continue swimming in circles around the pool.

The water does not hurt you – after all this is Underbog, not Serpentshrine Caverns. Swim to the wall and go through the crack. Turn on your stealth and avoid the packs of Fen Rays and wasps. There are two more Hibiscuses near the packs, they’re quite easy to get without aggroing anything, and you can always Sap the Fen Rays if you want to be perfectly safe – one of them has a habit of getting quite close to the flower.

Another boss, and most of the times he guards a flower. Stealth right to the back, and if you stay close to the wall, you shouldn’t get aggro. There’s not much of the instance left, so let’s quickly wrap it up.

Here you might want to be a bit careful. The Underbog Lord that is patrolling through the corridor doesn’t see stealth, but he has a quite long aggro range for a level 65 elite, so it’s pretty certain that you will have to either kill him, or use Vanish and continue. Either way is fine.

And we’re at the end. Avoid the boss, grab the Hibiscus that is located behind him, and jump down for a shortcut back to the entrance. From there, you can safely go out, reset the instance and go in again. After all this, you should have about 15 flowers in your inventory. Enjoy your easy 2250 reputation points! :]