Ready Check: Flame Leviathan, Pt III
by Michael Gray 
Jun 15th 2009 at 9:00AM
Fighting Flame Leviathan
When you get to the end of the courtyard, having blown up all four towers and the Storm Beacons, there is a final gateway. It's guarded by an Ulduar Colossus and a pack of iron dwarves on each side.
When you kill the last of those trash mobs, Flame Leviathan will come storming out, and the fight happens immediately.
There are two ways I'm going to discuss doing this fight, so let's start by looking at Flame Leviathan's abilities.
- Flame Vents - An interruptable cast that does massive damage to everyone around it.
- Battering Ram - Like Siege Engines themselves, if you get in front of Flame Leviathan, it will ram you. You'll get knocked back and get a debuff that means you take double damage.
- Gathering Speed - As the fight progresses, he will stack this buff. It allows him to go 5% faster, and will stack up to 20 times.
- Missiles – Everything in the zone that's exposed (meaning, not riding in a vehicle) will take ongoing damage every second. Everything. So if you fall out of your vehicle, you will need heals to stay alive long.
How Flame Leviathan Fights
When Flame Leviathan busts out of the gateway, it will immediately pick a random Demolisher or Siege Engine to chase. Don't worry -- there's a raid announcement when that happens. The boss'll chase that vehicle for about 30 seconds, and then pick someone new to chase. It immediately turns around to follow that person instead.
If it catches the person its chasing, it rams them to do additional damage.
At this point, it's worth talking a little more about the Salvaged Demolisher's ability to launch people. You can actually stand on Flame Leviathan. The Demolisher person-catapult ability is how you do so. If you're so inclined (and we're going to talk about how to do this in a second), you can launch the Demolisher's passenger on top of Flame Leviathan. That person can then attack the missile turrets, which will also have effects on the boss. You'll have impeded mobility once on top, though, so it's best for a ranged class to be the one to go up top.
With that caveat let's talk about the two strategies.
Diagonal KitingThe room in which Flame Leviathan first appears is a box. We'll label the corners of this box as A, B, C, and D respectively.
When the fight first starts, you should have everyone lined up in corner D. (Make sure everyone's on the inside of the last pillar area, or you'll lose people when the "gate" appears.
Flame Leviathan will immediately pick a person and start chasing them. Choppers should rush in front of the boss, and drop tar in front of him, and Demolishers should set that stuff on file.
Everyone else should get behind Flame Leviathan, and attack him from behind. The target remains in that starting spot at "D," waiting for the boss to reach him.
When Flame Leviathan switches targets, the new person targeted should immediately about face, and head for corner A. Everyone else immediately gets behind the boss, and opens fire. Then, when the boss switches targets the next time, the new target heads for corner D, and everyone gets behind the boss.
This pattern repeats indefinitely. The idea is that the person being targeted by Flame Leviathan should kite him into a corner (A or D, switching between the two). Everyone else gets behind the boss so that they can DPS, and be ready to take off to the new corner at a moment's notice.
This is my favorite method to do the fight. It's fast, easy to explain, and is worth an achievement called Shutout.
The Longer Way
The longer way works similarly. However, instead of kiting Flame Leviathan from A to D, you kite him from A, to B, to D, then to C. You're drawing a big perimeter around the whole area.
The reason you do it this way is to actually purposefully shut down the boss from time to time, giving you a little bit of a break. Whenever the Gather Speed buff is up to 5 stacks, have your Demolisher hurl a passenger up top. The passenger gets on top of Flame Leviathan, and kills the turrets. (You have to kill 2 in Normal Mode, and 4 in Heroic Mode.) Depending on how much stam and survivability your ranged DPS has up there, you may also need to add a healer up top with him.
When the turrets are all down, Flame Leviathan goes into Systems Shutdown. This will give your folks a much-needed break, as well as increase damage done to Flame Leviathan by 30%.
Summary
Flame Leviathan is actually a pretty easy fight. It sounds more complicated than it is because no part of it is based on your actual character or class. Instead, everything is based off the vehicle, with its health scaling according to your gear's iLevel.
Ready Check is here to provide you all the information and discussion you need to bring your raiding to the next level. Ready Check appears twice a week, with writers Jennie Lees and Michael Gray.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Pantyraider Jun 15th 2009 9:24AM
This loot pinata is being stingy with his neck piece.
Reathren Jun 15th 2009 9:52AM
You dont actually have to start by talking to lorekeeper norganon, you can also start the encounter by talking with Brann Bronzebeard. Doing so will cause the encounter to start with hard mode turned off. I suppose its then not necesary to kill all the special towers (as hard mode is not on anyway) but my guild always does so anyway.
Wyred Jun 15th 2009 9:52AM
It's worth mentioning a couple of other things here. One, if you don't talk to the lore-keeper, the defenses won't acivate. This means you don't need to take down the towers before the boss, as they won't be up. If you're doing the fight without a tower up, just talk to Brann to make your vehicles active.
Secondly, pyrite barrels. Demolishers stacking the dot do pretty much all the damage, and it's neccessary to keep this up as much as possible. Tips for this, demolishers start with 10 shots, allowing them to stack the dot up immediately while their passengers pick up more, but you may want to slow your shot rate down to give the passengers time to get pyrite. secondly, once you have a rolling stack of 10, you don't need to shoot more than once every 8 seconds or so to maintain it. The barrels do cause dmg on impact, so you may want to fire extra barrels during a shutdown, but that's pretty much it. Finally, if you're chucking people up, it's possible for the demolishers without a passenger to get a 10 stack up, restock thei ful, thn chuck their passengers. With 8-10 shots in the tank they may be able to keep up the stack till they get their passenger back. If not, you still got a load of dps out of it.
If you're doing this with any towers up managing pyrite dots is essential. If not, it'll still make things easier.
Tillman Jun 15th 2009 10:34AM
Does the vehicle health scale off of the iLvl of the driver, or passenger, or both?
Amak Jun 15th 2009 10:51AM
Driver only.
Glaras Jun 15th 2009 10:56AM
Just the driver.
bunny Jun 17th 2009 1:58AM
although the vehicle health scales from only the driver, I believe there is also turret health (probably only on the siege engine). if the vehicle goes to 0, you both get kicked out; but if you have a very undergeared person on turret, they may get kicked out of the vehicle before the driver if you take enough damage
vazhkatsi Jun 15th 2009 10:46AM
actually, if you have been farming pre ulduar content, and are in mostly 213/226 gear, shutout is incredibly easier than launching passengers.
Lanthus Jun 15th 2009 10:53AM
It's also worth mentioning that those missiles that attack everything not inside of a vehicle relentlessly attack the choppers as well. Perhaps it does the other vehicles too, I've never been in another one though.
Amak Jun 15th 2009 10:59AM
Rockets do constant damage to the whole raid, you just feel it more when outside a vehicle.
Angus Jun 15th 2009 12:18PM
All vehicles take the damage. It's just that the health pools for the demolishers and siege engines are so much larger that it isn't noticed as much.
Amak Jun 15th 2009 10:57AM
As far as I am aware, the Chopper's tar doesn't slow Flame Leviathan, only trash.
Sean Jun 15th 2009 12:13PM
That was my understanding too, otherwise his speed buff could be effectively nullified by a coordinated chopper team. Flaming tar, though, is still an effective DoT especially if you are destroying his turrets.
W01ph Jun 15th 2009 12:50PM
Also worth noting, the scaling of the vehicles isn't purely from ilvl. Someone in all ilvl 200 blues is going to produce a vehicle with less HP than someone in all ilvl 200 purps. We've also discovered that the scaling from weapons only applies to the main hand weapon, off hand and 'ranged' does not apply to the scaling either. Also, once you are in the vehicle, you can strip off your gear to save repair costs, but DO NOT try getting into the vehicle naked. As well as, if anyone had considered wearing just their single highest ilvl piece to maximize their average ilvl, don't, you suffer severe vehicle penalties with empty slots. Since we noticed the effects of various differences in items, we've been experimenting with various gear combos trying to understand the scaling in more depth. This is just what we've found so far.
Armyman83 Jun 15th 2009 6:06PM
This is correct. Your vehicle HP scales off the average ilevel of items in all slots except for shirt/tabard/ranged (totem, sigil, wand, etc.) Also, blue items lose -13 to ilevel when calculating, and greens lose -26. An empty slot is considered 0 and averaged in.
fenian Jun 15th 2009 3:24PM
I can confirm that if you ignore the lorekeeper and just speak to Brann, Hard Mode will be turned off and you can ignore the perimeter towers.
yokumgang Jun 15th 2009 3:41PM
System Shutdown causes Flame Leviathan to take 50% more damage, not 30%.