OutDPS!

Continuing my series on Ulduar encounters from a hunter’s perspective, Razorscale. Much nerfed recently, the Razorscale encounter is still lots of fun, and a challenge if you’re undergeared. My guild got her to 2% health when we inadvertently 9 manned her (forgot to summon someone), and the tank had forgotten to take off some non-tanking gear he had worn for the iLvl to vehicle health mechanic in the flame leviathan encounter. When we got the tank defense capped again and summoned the 10th person, we got the quick shave achievement without even trying. There’s no trash on the way in. Starting the event involves simply talking to an NPC.

There are two states in this fight- when the boss is flying, and when she’s on the ground. You start off with her in the air. There are two types of NPCs that help you this fight- one repairs the harpoons that allow you to get Razorscale down to the ground, and the other will help you fight.

Phase 1: The adds have to be dealt with while the repair crews work on the harpoon guns. On 25 man, there are 4. On 10 man, there are two. The adds themselves are fairly trivial now, but the kill order should be Sentinals, Watchers, and then Guardians. On 10 man, the sentinel’s whirlwind does very manageable amounts of damage, so we group them up and AOE. On 25 man, you would want to range DPS them and have melee work on the watchers. While you’re doing this, the boss will be casting devouring flames at players, which must not be stood in. If you have a raid frame addon capable of this, some people report being able to see who the dragon’s targeting before she fires her fireballs.

Phase 2: once all the harpoons are fixed, someone has to right click them all to bring her down to the ground. She’ll be stunned for 3o seconds, so expect a heroism and DPS her, ignoring adds. In my guild, I’m responsible for firing the harpoons. I make sure there are no sentinals around to whirlwind before firing the last one. I also jump-disengage to where I want to be to avoid DPSing while running. You don’t necessarily have to move for the first one, but you don’t want to be in front of her when you get her down to 50%, because that’s when she stays down and gets some nasty moves.

DPS her until she takes flight again (damaging the harpoons on her way up) and then go back to step one.

Phase 3: Once you get her to 50%, she won’t go back up, but blows everyone back, and then starts attacking and casting from the ground. There’s no more adds at this point, so make sure any extras are cleaned up. Standard dragon fight rules apply- don’t stand in front of it.

At this point, it’s a DPS race because flame buffet will make the tank one-shottable in short order. Stand at max range to avoid being thrown back by wind buffet, and hope your tanks and healers are capable of doing their jobs. The tanks get stacking fuse armor debuffs that will eventually make it impossible to taunt. The offtank usually picks up after two of these. If the dragon buffets the tank out of healing range (or the healer, for that matter), you all lose.

In addition to the pressure to finish this fight fast, I’ve noticed that as of the current live build, feign death does not seem to work on her. Not reliably, at least. Watch your agro. Carefully. If you pull the dragon, hit deterrence and hope your tank is quick on the uptake.

That’s it for this fight- fairly easy, lots of fun. I think I’ll do XT next, because loot leviathan doesn’t care that you’re a hunter- it just cares what machine you’re driving.