Ready Check: Kologarn, Iron Council, Auriaya
by Michael Gray 
Jul 1st 2009 at 10:00PM
Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.
The time is nigh. You've brought down the hellish tank called Flame Leviathan, released Razorscale from unimagine torment, and put down Ignis the Furnace Master. With fire in your bellies and laughter in your voice, you've shuddered and deconstructed the Deconstructor. You've right clicked the teleportation widget, and have brought yourself to the Antechamber of Ulduar.
We'll be talking, in this installment of Ready Check, about:
The first trash mobs in this area aren't too bad. You can have a Warlock banish the elemental, which might save your tank a little angst. When you see the big guys (Rune Etched Sentries), you might want to brush up a bit of coordination. The big guys place fire runes on the ground. In the grand tradition of raids everywhere, don't stand in the runes' circles or you'll die. The big guys also jump around, so this is a "cuddle" fight -- if everyone's standing on top of the tank, you'll have a little easier time of it.
I actually like to go up the stairs right away, and go face down . . .
Kologarn
When you approach the "balcony," Kologarn will suddenly spring up in front of you. The first time I saw the boss do that, I was incredibly impressed. The dude looks cool and impressive, not to mention HUGE, which is about everything I could want from a raid boss. Once you kill Kologarn, he splits into pieces and literally becomes the bridge you'll use to get into central Ulduar.
I prefer to fight Kologarn first in the Antechamber of Ulduar because he's not actually that difficult. He's got two arms to watch out for, no adds, and only a couple of gimmicks. Here's how the fight goes:
First, kill his right arm. Then kill his body. Then kill his right arm again when it respawns. Then kill his body. Then kill his left arm. After you kill that left arm, he'll probably fall over dead, and there you go. One thing to note: each time you kill the right arm, it'll become a stack of adds. Have your off-tank and ranged DPS gather up and kill those adds. Kologarn also fires blue eyebeams into the raid -- don't get hit by them. Lastly, make sure your tank stays in range of him, or Kologarn will use petrifying breath to kill you all. You'll need to swap tanks if Kologarn hits you with Overhead Smash too much.
Does that sound too simple? Like I said, this isn't exactly rocket science. Nonetheless, let's break it down a little bit for the more tactically, number minded among our group.
As a note, since you're facing Kologarn, his "Left Arm" is on YOUR right. His "Right Arm" is on your left.
- Overhead Smash - The not so massive attack inflicts Physical damage and decreases armor by 25% for 45 sec. This is what your main tank needs to watch out for. If it stacks up too many times, you'll have 0 armor. If you get two stacks, "swap" so that the off-tank is tanking Kologarn. This debuff drops off you sometimes even while you're fighting him, so try not to lose too much sleep over something that sounds scarier than it actually is.
- Petrifying Breath - Inflicts heavy, heavy Nature damage every second and increases damage taken by 20% for 8 sec. This is only used if the tank is not in melee range. So tank, stay in melee range.
- Brittle Skin - Increases damage taken by 20% for 8 sec. Similar to Overhead Smash. If it stacks too many times, swap tanks to let it drop.
- Focused Eyebeam - Inflicts steady, moderate Nature damage to enemies within 3 yards. Don't stand in it, and you'll be fine. If you're the person targeted by the eyebeam, you'll need to move out of the way - try not to kite the eyebeam on top of anyone else. As a note, this is what Kologarn used to chase Bronzebeard out of Ulduar in the preview trailer.
Left Arm
- Shockwave - The shockwave from the massive arm sweep inflicts Nature damage. This is what the left arm does during the fight. I've not seen a healer yet who's intimidated by the damage, but it's always a good idea to keep potions on hand.
Right Arm
- Stone Grip - Squeezes the life out of the target, stunning it and inflicting Physical damage every 1 sec until Kologarn's Arm sustains 100,000 damage (in Normal, while in Heroic, it lasts 480,000). It turns out that Kologarn is a Gropey McGroperson. He will periodically snatch up a member (or three) of the raid, and do damage every second to the person who got grabbed. At this point, it is incredibly important you do damage to the arm. Once the arm has sustained enough damage, the raid member will be freed. This isn't really a big deal, since you want to systematically bring down the right arm anyway.
Bringing it together
Here's how this all works. Every time you kill an arm, Kologarn's "body" takes as much damage as the arm had in life. So, by killing the arms, you're doing that damage to the boss anyway. So, just keep killing the arms. We actually frequently "ignore" the Left Arm, in favor of keeping as many debuffs and stacking effects up on the body. (These debuffs can make the tank's life a little easier.) If you don't feel you get benefit to doing that, just keep blowing away the arms. (Obviously, always kill the Right Arm first.)
So, kill the Right Arm every time it's up. (That's the grabby arm.) When the Right Arm dies, kill the adds. Keep the offtank and main tank in range of the body, so that you can swap if the tank gets too many debuffs, and so that you don't get a Petrifying Breath. Stay out of eye beams.
When Kologarn dies, he'll fall over and form the bridge to the other side of the chasm. That's where your hard earned loot lives, in a chest on the other side.
And now, you're off to see the Iron Council.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Guides, Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sladedarkonis Jul 1st 2009 10:20PM
Link to part 2 doesn't seem to be working =(
Robert Jul 1st 2009 10:30PM
Oops, that's a pic of XT-002.
hipponaut Jul 1st 2009 11:00PM
You don't need to swapt tanks when fighting Kologarn anymore. The debuff only lasts few seconds now down from 45 so the tank simply never gets more than one stack. They changed it few weeks ago.
Xiol Jul 2nd 2009 7:19AM
If I'm not mistaken you still have to switch tanks on the 25man encounter, but during 10man the stack will fall off the tank before another one appears, so switching is unnecessary.
Dave Jul 2nd 2009 12:55AM
I like how you say there are no adds and then say there are adds.
iDruid Jul 2nd 2009 1:39AM
, no adds,
Fail.
Squeek Jul 2nd 2009 4:30AM
Uh... you're missing many key points here.
The elementals you can Banish have an ability called Harden Fists which will one-shot anything anywhere near its melee range. That's kind of important to know. Tanks can live through it if they pop cooldowns or have insanely high health pools, but there's no reason to try. He is rooted while he is using the ability, so it's just a matter of walking away from him while he casts it.
One of the dwarfs will debuff someone with a cleansable magic ability (forgot the name) that roots the target in place and makes them emit an aoe lightning attack every second that does a ton of damage. If you're stacked in 25-man and don't notice this, it's a wipe. Oh, and you can Poly the other Dwarf for a full-on crowd control fight.
Here's a big one. The giants will kill you if you stack in 25 man. Clustering is important to keep the guys from pouncing and you should ALWAYS be behind them, but the best advice is really DO NOT STACK. The orb they spawn will do too much raid damage to heal through and you will die. You can live in 10-man just fine, but not in 25.
A note for Kolo: Melee, face Kologarn next to the tank. Don't pop out to try to DPS the right arm from outside because then you can be eye-beamed. If you're next to the tank, you cannot be eye-beamed. So, from my melee group to yours, face Kolo right next to his body while targeting the Right Arm. Trust me, it works, and it will save your raid.
The best way to avoid eyebeams is to leave an aisle for people to run through. Make sure you're the one targeted if you have DBM, as it will pop up the message based on taking damage from eye-beams and not whether it's actually targeting you. There is a generic raid warning for when YOU are eye-beamed. When you are, get into the aisle and run along it. We typically line up all the ranged people along the back wall and leave the middle aisle open, so eye-beamed people step forward about 2 steps and then strafe right/left based on their position.
As for the right, right, left combo, it works sometimes and will kill you other times. You have to monitor his health and the health of his arms carefully if you plan on doing this. Breaking an arm drops 15% of his health off, so if he's above 40%, this will not work and will only get you killed from lack of DPS on the right arm when it respawns. What we typically do to ensure that it works is to have one DPSer split off and DPS the left arm during the broken arm phase (this is 10-man, so maybe 2-3 in 25). They shouldn't kill it, but they will bring it to about 20-40% or so because incidental AOE damage is hitting it the entire time anyway as the hitboxes for the arms are massive. Then when the right arm breaks, it's only about 5-10 seconds of DPS on the left arm and he's done (and you get an achievement!).
If timing is too big of a concern, just ignore the left arm entirely. That's the easiest way to do it, honestly.
SuckItTrebek Jul 2nd 2009 5:08AM
A great eyebeam tactic for 10mans-not sure if this would work in 25s, since my 25 group doesn't want to experiment-is to have everyone clump into melee range but one. That one person at range will get ALL of the eyebeams. Stand just inside doorway and simply run left or right along the wall, return to position afterwards. Giving the distraction a dedicated healer during eyebeams helps, too, as well as having a backup decoy should the right arm grab the primary.
NynjaMonkii Jul 2nd 2009 10:37AM
I can confirm that this does NOT work in 25-man. Our guild tried it, and his overhead smash does AoE damage that will kill your healers. Better just to leave the aisle open.
robo Jul 2nd 2009 6:24AM
Move out of the Big Guys' pokeballs!
Paul Curtis Jul 11th 2009 1:09PM
Thanks for the Ready Check posts I find them really helpful.
Can I give you a suggestion though, at the foot of each new Ready Check, could you link to previous ready check(s) for the same raid instance (Ulduar, Naxx, etc). That way it would be easy to read up on all the bosses in the same instance without having to search around the website. Or have a link to an index or something, I'm sure you know what I mean.
anei Jul 15th 2009 7:33AM
I didnt find the article very helpfull. It is a mix of tactics for 10 man and 25 man raid encounter. But if you use 10 man tacts for 25 man, you wipe fast. For 10 men - you need only one tank on boss. Overhead smash debuff doesnt stack but drops and doesnt present a problem unless main tank healer is running away down the stairs because of an eyebeam. For 25 men you would want to have at least 2 tanks, 3 are even better. They need to taunt of each other after they get 2 debuffs otherwise they are one shooted. You need one offtank for ads. Ads in 10 men group can be aoe downed - i think we usualy bring them to boss so that aoe damage the boss and the ads. In 25 men raid ads get additional aoe damage ability, which can wipe the raid, so tank needs to keep them far away from everyone else. Also tactics right arm-ads-boss-right arm-ads-boss until boss is realy low on health works better then swaping between right arm and left arm (something already squek mentioned). Avoiding Eyebeams is realy hard to execute in 25 man, due to larger number of people. Everyone needs to spread: those that are in open line (no wall behind them) should run straight backwards, so that they dont cross anyone and down the stairs. Those that have wall behind them, can run two tiles forward and then to the corner. But that means eyebeams folowing them make some damage on the melee. Another possibility is to stack plp more in the open space in kind of a wave pattern. Also as DBM doesnt give accurate warnings its good to check if Eyebeams are coming towards you from both sides - then you better start running. I am not sure if anywhere is mentioned that this boss has large hit box so all melee should group around the tank not to get eyebeamed (in 10 men and 25 men). You can also put hunters together with melee if you are short on space, but dont put healers, cause all spellcasters get stuned and cant cast for several sec. In 25 man raid damage is very intensive and you need to assign a healer for people that are stoned gripped. The biggest flaw of article i found the fact i consider eyebeams biggest problem and all tactics we get on it: dont get hit by them and stay out of them. After reading also hodir tactics I am under impression this guy was never in ulduar himself and didnt even read up on wowwiki.