Next up in my series on how to Ulduar as a hunter (and yes, I’m using Ulduar as a verb- this is now a thing), Kologarn! He’s a push-over. In fact, we curb-stomped him the first time I ran him 25 man. Then ran roughshod over him. Okay, I’ll stop with the terrible puns.
This fight is not hard, but it incorporates a gear and execution check for DPS, healers, and tanks. There are several important mechanics for hunters to be aware of. On a macro scale, Kologarn is a giant fighting you with the upper half of his body. You have to beat up the right arm, AOE adds, then beat up the body. Once his arm respawns, rinse, repeat, and take a shot.
First, some housecleaning. Clarify with your group that when you are talking about his right arm, you mean the mob called “right arm”, not the arm on your right. Basics of left and right while facing something.
When you start attacking his right arm, you will eventually be targeted by eye lasers. How cool is that, eh? Anyways, the way we deal with them is to keep the floor along the walls clear of people who don’t want to be burned to a crisp. Basically, when someone gets targeted by the beams (and having deadly boss mods will really help you with figuring out whether that’s you), they run back to the wall, carefully, so as to avoid dragging the beams over a healer, and then kite them along the wall until they give up.
Also, while attacking the right arm, Kologarn will snatch someone (or some three people in 25 man) off the ground and squish them. Once this happens, your raid DPS needs to be high enough to get him to release them or else you’ll lose them. Once you kill the right arm (“only a flesh wound”… heh), a bunch of damage is done to the body, and few rubble adds are spawned. These do a fair bit of AOE damage, so should be burned down as fast as possible.
You have 45 seconds until the arm respawns, so take advantage and focus fire on the boss once the adds are down.
There you have it, fairly simple for hunters. A tip- get good at strafing and jumpshots so you don’t have to completely stop DPS while running for dear life from the laser eyebeams of death.
AFAIK Kologarn doesn’t target the one he’s hitting with his magic LSD-overdose eyebeam. So DBM only tells you that you’re actually taking damage, but not if the beams _follow_you_.
But after some tries you’ll recognise if you are the target, because the beams spawn left and right (or right and left? :) of your toon; if you’re standing exactly in the center of both of them when they spawn: RUN! :)
I got a message 3 seconds before the beams took a definitive move in my direction- so obviously he does something to clue DBM in :)
Is the dbm ‘high warning’-sound playing before you get hit by the beams? Maybe i just overlooked the message until now (last kologarn-visit: yesterday, DBM also updated yesterday) – but i’ll keep my eyes open next time!
(in this case excuse my faulty comment please – we always tend to be sure ’bout something until someone proofs us wrong, don’t we? :)
Heh, that’s the way of theorycrafting :) I can’t test this with screenshots until I do the encounter again next week.
This fight is actually kind of fun when you get the hang of it. It took us a couple wipes to do poor positioning and eye-beams that seemed to always target the players with the most lag, kill them, and then prance around the rest of the raid, but we got it down. One of the coolest death animations I’ve ever seen. I mean, becoming the bridge to walk over to move on?! Awesome! Even his intro animation is good. Can you imagine stepping into that room, not knowing what to expect, and then having THAT giant monstrosity looking down at you? Frightening.
So far he hasn’t dropped anything noteworthy for hunters, as far as I can recall. The next boss, AKA the crazy cat lady, drops a gorgeous bow. One of the other hunters dropped 200 DKP on it (more than I had in total). Not that I’d really want a bow anyway…Real men use guns. Or Dwarves, that is to say.
I got the envoy of mortality, so I’m not changing for a long time. Most of the ranged weapons in Ulduar are sidegrades anyways.
Actually, Kologarn drops http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45261 – Giant’s Bane. I would be happy to upgrade my EoM with that beauty (and I think especially dwarves would like it too ;D)!
But yeah, the best DPS weapon outside arenas comes from Thorim’s hard mode, http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45570 – Skyforge Crossbow.
It is an upgrade, but I’m certainly not going to bid more than the minimum DKP on it, because it’s a bigger delta for most of the other hunters.
I did not realize when I posted that comment that he dropped that gun. I’d beaten him about a half dozen times, but he hadn’t dropped it. Until tonight! Dropped a decent but not over the top amount of tokens (out of the two hunters in the raid, the other one had the bow from the next boss, and doesn’t like using guns) but I like to bid an item for what it’s worth. Heck, when I picked up my Envoy of Mortality, I bid every token I had, and I could have bid about seventy less. But it was badass.
Getting off track…Yes, it looks amazing on Dwarves! Combined with the tier, it looks pretty incredible. I don’t have the tier yet, but I’ve got the shoulders and the helm that are the same model as the tier. The gas mask helm and the gun makes me look like some kind of riot police. Pretty cool.
The actual stats of the gun though…I’m not quite sure…To be honest, it was an AP drop. Fifteen AP less than the Envoy, and roughly .3% less crit. It did have haste and a bit of armor pen though, so I’m gonna have to see how it holds up.
Until I get the Skyforge Crossbow, anyway. :)
I invested so much of my mojo in getting the envoy that I’m almost not looking forward to a ranged weapon upgrade… ;)