Friday Food for Thought - First Ulduar Boss and you

Morning blog lovers!

TGIF!

Wooohooo. Unfortunately my weekend is filled with crap to do and I am going to have very little time to do anything wow related. I am pretty much a sad panda. That is ok though, hopefully my guild will clear heroic naxx without me leading it, only time will tell....

Uldaur? Udaur? Ulduar, there we go

That is right, the new raid instance is right around the corner, how exciting! I have been reading alot about this new place and its 14 bosses. Seems like Blizzard has decided to make the first boss in here a vehicle fight! I know, I know, your excited right?

/end sarcasm

Flame Leviathan is his name and he is a HUGE rebot that you don't actually tank, but kite around. There are three types of vehicles used in this encounter - motor bike, siege tankers, and siege catapults. In the 25 man version, you can only have a maximum of 5 of each.. That means that 10 people in the raid are going to have to be passengers on the sieges.

But have no fear, you have stuff to do as well.

Lets back track a little though. When the event begins, you actually have to go through a gauntlet. I think this is blizzards way of getting you used to the controls of your vehicle because unlike the Malygos fight, there isn't any sort of daily quest to get you "used" to the controls. This gauntlet is rather easy and should be a breeze due to the lack of raid damage that is going out.

This doesn't mean that you can't wipe, just means that you shouldn't =P

Item level issue with the vehicles

Lets make this clear. The higher item level gear you have, the stronger the vehicle is going to be. That does not mean that it goes off of any stats, just item level. Confused? ok...an example then.

You are a caster. You are a good little raider so you are hit capped. Once you get into your vehicle, it doesn't matter if you are hit capped or have zero hit. Your stats dont matter, only the item level of your gear. Still not 100% clear? Bring on another example!

You are a tank. You are a good little meat head, so you have 35-40k hp buffed. Once you get into your vehicle of choice, it didn't matter if you have 10k hp. Your stats don't matter, only the item level of your gear. 100% clear now? Fantastic!

Lets do some math and find out exactly what the difference is.

Me? do math? I am too lazy for that lol. Have no fear! Ferrante, a Death Knight in The Goon Squad on Kel'Thuzad did that math for us. Yay Ferrante! Lets see what he came up with.

Shirt, tabard, offhand, and ranged/relic slots do not affect vehicle scaling. This does mean an ilvl 226 1 hand weapon is better than an ilvl 213 2 hander.

Enchants and gems do not affect it either, it is based solely off item level. - An ilvl 200 blue is equivalent to an ilvl 187 epic.

Experimenting with other combos of blue/epic gear gave me reasonable confidence that a blue item is equivalent to an epic 13 levels lower. An empty slot is equivalent to an ilvl 0 epic this does mean equipping an ilvl 0 blue such as Insignia of the Scourge will be worse than having nothing at all in the slot.

Empirically, taking the average ilvl of your gear (subtract 13 for each blue, 26 for each green)and dividing by 15 (total number of applicable slots), then subtracting 170 will give you the percent increase of the health points of your vehicle compared to base - it cannot be decreased though (naked is a 0% increase).

Thus: All ilvl 200 epic gear => 200-170 => 30% increase in vehicle hp. All 226 would be a 56% increase,

I did some limited testing of vehicle damage:

Naked: 2148 average attack with 171 attacks Avg 213
Gear: 3038 average attack with 160 attacks 3038/2148 = 41.4% so that seems to be within the margin of error for the expected value of 43%

Confused? I'm not going to lie and say that I get all of it, but I get the idea.

So now, back to that big ass robot that drops our preciousshess.

The boss will attack one of the siege tankers for 30 seconds and then switch to another one. The moto bikes need to lay down tar which slows the boss down. The siege catapults are going to lite the tar on fire and the tankers are going to kite him through it.

And that is the boss fight in a nutshell. Of course there is a boat load of other things that are going on, but I am not going to get into that now. For a full strategy and a video of the encounter, check this site. Good stuff I tell yeah, only the best stuff for the readers of WTF lol.

So...like...what vehicle suites me best?

Great question. The answer is simple, I have no F'n clue lol. From reading the description and watching the strat, I kinda want to try out the moto bike one. Seems like my kinda of role lol. Try not die cuz of low hp, zoom in and out and drop black tar. Pew Pew when I get the chance, seems fun, but who really knows.

Getting catapulted on top of the boss also seems very entertaining. Nothing like a big ass cow flying through the air and landing on top of a giant robot.

What about you guys? Which siege vehicle would you like to try out?

Until then people, I'm WTFout!