Impressions on 3.1

In short : They have done it again !!

What have they done ? I have been playing whenever I have had the time to do it the last couple of days, since the patch launched. I have had the change to skim the surface on the Tournament in Icecrown. Which seems new and fresh and im sure that I will dig deep into it all when I have the time for it. The first impression for it all is good, and im sure there is a lot of fun to have there. And no one can say that you don’t look awesome with that lance.

But this is minor. Compared to what I have used the most time on. Ulduar. Its so much more than Naxxramas ever was in its remake. I want more. I cant wait to visit it again. Its alot harder than Naxxramas, and hopefully it will get even harder along the way. And its just so much more interesting. I didn’t do Naxxramas in Vanilla wow, so that was also a new instance for me. But this is so much more appealing. The jump in diffucelty seems good, it reminds me a lot of what we encountered in Tier 2 in TBC, The eye and Serpentshine. Seems like a good balance.

I have been in there as 25 man and 10 man. One night each so far. The first event on normal mode, is good fun. Its seem to be more like a gimmick fight already though. As the Flame Leviathan is so easy. I have only been passenger on a demolisher so far. So I have been the one, thrown up on the boss to kill the batteries. Its great fun, but no real challenge. And as we all know easy mode bosses, becomes dull fast. Vehcicles or not.

But then there is all the rest, 13 more bosses. Normal mode and hard mode and loads of challenges in achievements. I have had the pleasure of Razorscale in 25 man the first night. Nice fight, we had to watch and keep the wathchers stunned or there deadly chain lightning, was a real damage dealer. You have to keep in mind not to run to far away from the healer and you need to be rdy to fast switch to the dragon when it get drawn down by the harpoons. And then on top of it all there was a really tight enrage timer. We had our best try on 20% the first night. Well, within our reach. But the encounter is already nerfed (See 15-4-09 changes), less damage from thrash and the enrage timer have got 2 more minutes on it. That was a change which came after our night in there as 25 man. So don’t know how it is now, my guess is we will steamroll right over it. Shame, cant really see why they nerf em already. Way to fast imo. But guess that’s the new blizzard/activision policy.

Last night I ventured in there with a 10 man guild group. Levitant down first try, easy mode. Then we went to razorscale again. Now in his new nerfed mode. We took him down first try. A bit messy at the end, but had a new tank and 1 new healer, which had never seen the fight before. But 1st try he went down.

Then we took the decision to have a look at Ignis the furnace master. Hehe, that was fun. First up he have some pretty interesting thrash, finally some hard thrash again. You cant just gather em and Aoe em down. You need to play to kill em. Brilliant. Especially the Fire elementals, which makes the whirlwind. Took some casualties from us, great fun.
Ignis, hmmm. He is hard. I think we took 10 try’s on him. Getting him to 65% or so at the best try. We had a lot of problems with people dying. When he charged he made 20K hits on our plate weares. Which im not sure is intended. But nevertheless the fight seems very fun, and will be a challenge to master. Im looking forward to see more of him later on.

We decided to go pay XT-002 deconstructor a visit, to see what he was up to. It’s a 2 phase fight. Phase 1, is a tank and spank phase. With him putting different debuffs on players, which have to run out, as they make aoe damage to nearby players. Pretty straightforward. But you still have to pay attention to what happens. Then we have phase 2. He spawns 3 types of adds. Plummer, they need to be picked up by an OT. We did not use more energy on em, just Off tanked. Bombs, which need to be killed by ranged dps. They explode when killed and do aoe damage. Last but not least, we have the scrapbots. Small robots, which if they reach the boss heals him up. Further more, the boss goes into a stun mode and unveils his heart. (Yes, a robot with a heart. Would rather call it a powersource.) You can then dps the heart, and that damage will be taken by the boss when he comes out of stun mode. (Just be aware, if you kill the heart, he will reset and you now have the boss on hardmode. Great way to turn a fight around, good thinking blizz.)
He as Razor have a tight enrage timer, but dps’ing the heart during phase2, helps a lot on that one. After some getting used to the fight, we got him down. This is for me a brilliant fight, very well done and fun in all aspects.
I guess a lot of you are interested in knowing how the dps is, in a retribution point of view. My judgement to it, taking into consideration the small amount of playtime I have had on it yet. Is we are in a good shape, I would stretch it to say, we are in a even better state than pre. 3.1. In my 10 man run, my dps wa s around 3,8K-4K dps. That’s not a bad dps, considering 10 man and on thrash and bosses. I ended the night with a pretty good result. The kill try on the Constructor my recount showed 5,2K dps, and that’s in a 10 man. So I have good hopes for Retribution dps in the future.



That what a bit about what I have seen and experienced in Ulduar so far. When it comes to Retribution in general after 3.1. A lot have changed, a lot. Gearwise, statwise and what abilities to do when and why.
I will try to build a Ret manual for 3.1. Lookout for a link on the sidepanel to the left, anytime soon. It will be a post, that will be upgraded and build upon, when ever I have any usefull information to add to it.

Until then take care and have fun in Ulduar, I know I will…