The XT-002 Deconstructor is the second mandatory boss encounter in the Ulduar raid instance, and is designed to test a guild's healing corp and overall DPS output. While the tanking for this encounter is fairly straight forward, DPS must be high in order the successfully beat the enrage timer.
XT-002 has two phases. During the first phase the main tank will hold him on the stairs while the raid spreads out and unloads on the huge robot. Every 25% health that the boss loses triggers phase two; the Deconstructor's heart will fall to the floor and robotic adds will spawn around the room. The adds must be dealt with (by an offtank and AOE DPS) while the heart is nuked. After 30 seconds in phase two, the XT-002 Deconstructor reactivates and phase one returns.
Happily, kitty Druids - and other melee classes - are particularly well suited for this fight.
Top 5 for last week's kill - click to enlarge
Preparation
No special preparation is required by a feral Druid assigned to DPS the XT-002 Deconstructor. Ensure that you have a well fed bonus (Fish Feast will suffice, although other foods may be superior depending on your stats) and quaff a Flask of Endless Rage. Having a Potion of Speed lying around is probably also not a terrible idea, as you'll want to maximize your performance during phase two.
Phase One
Phase one begins with the main tank pulling the XT-002 Deconstructor to the stairs opposite the entrance to the room. Follow the tank in and immediately begin a standard feral DPS cycle - of course, don't open up with the really heavy DPS until the boss is in position, because it's difficult for a tank to build a huge threat buffer while on the move.
Periodically through the fight you may randomly be afflicted with one of two debuffs: Light Bomb or Gravity Bomb. In either case, break away from the melee group and run to a designated safe spot (we run to the left of the stairway).... a healer should be nearby, but not too close as Gravity Bomb will suck in players within 20 yards of you when it goes off.
As XT-002 approaches 75% health, start stockpiling your combo points and withhold Tiger's Fury. As XT ticks past the three quarters mark, unleash a 5 combo point Savage Roar just in time for his heart to drop out. (Don't worry about having Rip up as phase two starts - the Deconstructor becomes immune to all damage.)
Phase Two
Once this phase starts you will be forced to creep forward a bit in order to hit the exposed heart - but don't go too far as you will quickly find yourself unable to Shred.
Mangle the heart, Rake, and Shred once - this should drop your energy below 40 - and then quaff your Potion of Speed, blow Tiger's Fury, and trigger Berserk. Now Shred to 5 combo points, Rip once, and Shred until Berserk runs out. After your Berserk buff falls off, pop a Ferocious Bite and then DPS the heart as normal until phase two ends.
The entire point of this phase is to inflict as much pain as possible, since any damage applied to the exposed heart counts as double. With sufficiently high DPS during the first heart phase it is possible to drop the XT-002 Deconstructor below 50%, thus skipping the nasty Tantrum that is the most dangerous part of phase one.
Note that despite what some other guides say, melee should almost never leave the exposed heart to deal with the adds in phase two - too much valuable DPS time is lost in doing so. Leave the adds to the ranged AOE classes.
Feral Utility
It is likely that one of your healers will require an Innervate during the course of this battle, so be prepared to locate them when asked, and help replenish their mana pool. By carefully timing when you pop out of cat form to cast the buff you can both innervate your healer and maintain close to 100% uptime on all of your abilities.
You may also be expected to cast a Tranquility during one of the XT-002 Deconstructor's later Tympanic Tantrums. Before popping out of cat form be sure to Barkskin yourself, and only then lay down the AOE healing love on your group.
As a final note, if you ever notice the small scrapbot adds getting too close to XT-oo2, use your judgement and consider peeling off to Swipe the crap out of them. The massive robot heals up if any scrapbots reach him, and if you don't see AOE death raining down on the 'bots, then your fast reaction could help keep the raid on track to beat the enrage timer.
24 comments:
You weren't there last night, but I died twice... it sucks.
The fight also works well with a feral MT as you can go kitty and pop berserk when the heart drops to help get additional damage on the boss (more than other tanks in the same situation).
Just remember to watch your boss timer and give yourself enough time to reposition and go bear before XT-002 reactivates.
I'd like to agree with your first sentence. It was true two weeks ago. Now its just a faceroll easy mode free loot for all fest :P
Bitterness and hardcore nerd rage aside, it is a very fun fight. As per your previous post and many comments, I'm looking forward to tackling him on hard mode.
With sufficiently high DPS during the first heart phase it is possible to drop the XT-002 Deconstructor below 50%I think that's not quite true, best I've seen is about 60%. My guess is that if you did enough DPS to get the main guy down to 50%, you'd have killed the heart and activated Hard Mode. Do you know for sure?
@Flyv:
Last week we were routinely getting XT to 54% after the first heart phase..... and the heart was sitting around 40%.
So yeah - it's entirely possible to skip a P1 without triggering hard mode.
I'd agree that melee shouldn't have to bother with the adds (even though it might be necessary). In my experience, ranged don't really need to kill them when the heart is up, either. If I recall, the adds were only about halfway to the boss when the heart goes away, so that should be enough time for ranged/AoE to take care of them after (especially with CC-effects).
By the way, the most dangerous part of this boss is probably its extremely annoying voice. I haven't wiped a lot on this boss, but I still heart its voice in my nightmares.
Weird, I always have to back-up to shred the heart. Maybe I'm in too close on the boss? I typically stand right as his foot. And take a side step to in order to see the heart. 90% of the time i have to take a step back otherwise i can't shred.
I think the heart's hit box is actually bigger than the bosses'. I've noticed that pets will actually move back as well once the heart is targeted.
I generally fight at max hitbox for any boss I'm working on (except Kologarn.... his eye beams scare me). So I can't reach the heart w/o scooting up a bit.
Good post, we use a different system for dealing with light bombs/gravity bombs, infact it's all detailed in this beautiful paint-skilzz pic:
http://makea.hattara.com/issna/MA/strat/xt.jpg
You might consider a bit more min/maxing on the scrapbots. Use spriest/hunter volley to deal with the scraps and using oomkins to root bomb-bots and blow them up to kill scraps. Mage/lock are pretty much wasted on the scraps though.
Also, the pummelers can be moved next to the boss and the passive aoe should be sufficient to kill them.
@Shamand:
To be honest I know that we have assigned ranged ppl to deal with the scrapbots, but I haven't a clue how/what it is they're doing.
It's not "all ranged nuke 'em now" though.... it's more refined. As a melee I'm oblivious to that part, though. =)
Damn K you ripped that up. I'm guessing you were running with a pure dps kitty build. I have had similar results, but topping out in the 5.1/5.2 K range. When you post things like this you should add addendums with your talents/gear/buffs foods of choice.
Thanks for the tip on the potion. I will definitely add that. You use a haste potion, but would other potions be equally effective? Or is there nothing else (can't research that while at work)?
Rawr!
And that kill was done with my RPB add-on completely busted, so I was managing my timers in my head instead of actually being able to see everything.
That was definitely my pure kitty build (which mirrors the one Runy @ Unbearably HoT uses). My gear is all T7, and is viewable on the armory. (And I DID post my consumable use.)
Great post as always. If you position XT between the two scrap piles on either the left or right wall the adds will only come from the opposite scrap piles and not the ones by the boss. This allows more time to nuke down the adds as they have farther to travel before getting to XT. This is confirmed to work on both 10 and 25 man versions. Since we had a pretty tight dps group we tried a 10 man hard mode last night. Getting the heart down was no problem but then chaos ensued as damage increased, void zones started popping and we wiped a few times before going back to regular mode. Looks like hard mode will be a decent challenge to the recently nerfed content.
And that kill was done with my RPB add-on completely bustedK - You should check out classtimer in the meantime. It won't show trauma (my only complaint), but we pretty much know when a warrior is there. I can post a UI screenie if you want.
PS - Great tips on this fight, and great blog in general. It's helped me greatly.
Emobear/Malfurion
Thanks for the correction on the 75% thing. Interesting.. I believe the optimal thing is to DPS the heart so XT goes to 76%, then 51%, then 26%, then 1%. That minimizes the amount of time for bombs and tantrums.
Just saw the DPS meter screenshot. Lol! My vanity requires that I point out I was in a tank spec :-P Also the way we do that melee gets an unfair boost since we stay on the heart (and get 2x dps) while the ranged takes out the bots.
Flyv; Hearts only appear at 75%, 50%, 25%, so you can't dps the heart to 76%. Otherwise yes, changing hearts is a good way to do things, and was part of tankspots video guide originally(pre the no bombs turing tantrum nerf).
Karthis, great article. I do this fight exactly the same, only waiting till the last few repair bots are within 10 yards before I turn and swipe them down.
Since you're speaking of DPS, apart from a Speed Potion, beg a Blood-Spec'd death knight in your raid to grant you Hysteria (30secs) just prior to the first and third heart. It has a 3 minute cooldown and syncs beautifully with Beserk. It gives you a 20% damage boost and will lift your dps by another 600-800+.
Feral druids really excel in this particular fight. Short of an emergency, we should stay on the heart at all costs because of the insane burst damage we can do over other classes.
This parse is WITHOUT hysteria.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/f0TX3LHbljIoTuJP/sum/damageDone/?s=7405&e=7867
You can top out a lot higher than 6k on XT. I hit 7.5k last week (prior to several of the upgrades I am wearing currently). I had a fish feast buff but I did not have a flask on.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Warsong&n=Vallen
The only timers I use are Quartz.
I know you can. My primary raid role is not DPS, and you significantly our gear me.
Throwing unexpected timer add on issues on top of things (plus a tranquility, innervate, and b res) and I was more than happy with the 6k.
If your primary role isn't dps I can understand that POV. It's not something easy to just pickup when you don't do it often.
Several of the upgrades I'm wearing now (chest/ring/boots) were picked up post XT, so my point being I wasn't that much better geared persay. (2pt8, trink, weapon only)
I don't even think 7.5k is that great to be honest, with a flask, hysteria (dk's give me no love) and 4 pc, 8k+ is feasible.
I haven't run the math, but I'm fairly certain that 2pc t8 is huge. (iirc, a kitty druid will want to run 2pc t7, 2pc t8).
Triplet of Mug'Thol:
A full raid of NAX25 geared people (i.e. not carrying a bunch of people in blues) should feel comfortable pulling people off the heart to take care of adds. If you have decent gear, then you should never even come close to the enrage timer.
Split your melee to both far corners of XT's hit box, that way if one of the melee gets bombed they can run out without melting all the melee.
Yes, I've switched from MT to Cat during heart phases, nothing to fear.
To handle tantrums, we are usually topped off on the first one, so no big deal there. Tantrum #2, our paladin does some voodoo where he can bubble his-self and take a lot of the raids damage. During #3, we have a druid in every group, and we all pop barksin/tranquil (even me the MT). We haven't seen a fourth tantrum.
" If you have decent gear, then you should never even come close to the enrage timer."
Agreed.
Although prior to this week's round of nerfs to XT this was untrue. The new Loot Pinata version of XT should almost never enrage however.
Note that a feral MT can actually shift into cat for the tantrums as well, since XT is not using his melee swing at this time. I'm not sure if the 30% DR from Predatory Instincts applies to tantrum damage, but either way having a smaller HP pool makes you easier to heal, on top of letting you squeeze in an extra bit of dps. I usually have enough time to get a 5CP rip off before the tantrum ends.
Just make sure you have a bit of a threat lead, and leave yourself a couple seconds to switch back to bear before he starts squishing you again!
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