Ulduar 25man: Hard modes

Progress in Ulduar has been good with normal modes generally being one-shotted allowing us to spend time on various hard modes while still having plenty of time to clear the instance (other than Algalon) before the reset. Completing the keepers on hard mode will of course eventually allow us to face Algalon, but we are not quite there yet.

Initially we spent some time working on Thorim's hard mode and came close several times while learning but having decided to move on last week and wanted to gauge how quickly we could kill Hodir without particularly going for the hard mode kill. We were slow by 18.1 seconds.

Having seen that the following week we decided there was no way we couldn't improve that and inevitably we killed Hodir in about 2 minutes and 59 seconds to achieve Heroic: I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare. Not our best attempt, but it can only improve.

So we moved back to Thorim and had some very strong attempts with less avoidable deaths than usual (excluding me!). The difference between doing this fight normally and hard mode is the presence of Sif which boosts Thorims health and increases raid damage significantly. Positioning and composition are very important but ultimately we got Heroic: Lose Your Illusion and some paladin shield.

It wasn't really a priority for us, but during last week's raids, Flame Leviathan was hit by the nerf hammer in a rather large way. Last week we had no trouble killing Flame Leviathan with three towers, so after this nerf it wasn't going to be completely unfeasible that we could do four towers. It is certainly a fun fight which is a shame as generally if one person in a particular vehicle makes a mistake early on, then it will cost you. But we got Heroic: Orbit-uary, one more for the meta and a bit of high level gear.

Next up we will be focusing on Freya having already got Heroic: Knock on Wood which involves one tree still being up, we are going to take a look at two and actually having to use a strategy instead of just killing anything that moves. We will also be taking a look at the hardest Iron Council mode having also achieved Heroic: I Choose You, Runemaster Molgeim, it may be a little hard but it is of course worth a look.

In other news, the 10 man team has also been working hard, achieving hard mode kills on Flame Leviathan+4, Freya+3, Thorim, Hodir , XT Deconstructor, Iron Council Steelbreaker, General Vezax and Yogg-Saron+3. I expect more progress there very soon too.

Apparently, I was responsible for any screenshots that might have been due, so there are none. They look suspiciously like the normal mode kills though if that helps.