Uu'nat progress

So as noted we have been progressing on Uu’nat for a bit. This is still ongoing and I think I’m starting to get a good feel for all phases of the fight, phase three included.

Now my observations on the second boss have changed somewhat. It seems that for melees the fight is mostly rather boring, since two of the primary mechanics of the fight—baiting the Oblivion Tears to the edges of the room so that people don’t run into them; not running into other players while Unstable Resonance is active thus creating an explosion instantly killing players nearby while reaching your relic before the debuff runs out—don’t target melee players unless there are too many of them or too many of the ranged and healers are dead.

Phase one

Now even as a range and healer, phases one and two are getting to be rather boring. Sure, there is a bit to watch out for with the marks¹ and how the Oblivion Tears have been baited so that you don’t run into other players as well as me having the extra duty in phase one of carrying the void relic² so I need to be positioned well before Unstable Resonance is cast so that other players can get to me easily as well as move around me easily. This is mostly difficult right at the end of phase one, since the room keeps getting smaller in phase one and before the intermission to phase two it tends to have gotten rather small indeed making the last Unstable Resonance somewhat tricky to play. Still, the incoming damage isn’t that great for the most part so you can stay almost completely concentrated on the mechanics and damaging the boss making phase one not overly interesting to play repeatedly—I think this is usually the main cause of some of our fails with Unstable Resonance in phase one, the mechanic still requires a certain amount of attention and people just get so into the flow of the fight that they let themselves get caught in a bad spot or actually just let the debuff run out.

The first intermission is also not overly complex, use the storm relic³ to kill the adds that have accrued during phase one and then use the void relic² and soak the Oblivion Tears—so we have more room to play in phase two—and then drop it on the correct mark by soaking the Unknowable Terror. The room also gets bigger again and doesn’t shrink regularly anymore making phase two somewhat easier to play.

Phase two

Here the fight gets slightly more interesting from a healer perspective, since there are actually some decent bursts of damage coming in when the storm relic³ gets used to clear the adds which at times comes in combination with Gift of N’Zoth: Hysteria which deals a decent amount of damage to the raid as well as healing the adds. This means there are actually a few decent chances to use cooldowns and actually heal people in phase two, which is made somewhat difficult by the necessity to bait and the largeness of the room—there is rarely a moment where I actually have everyone in range allowing me to properly prepare for incoming damage meaning I have to take positioning into account in order to be able to heal people properly. This adds a somewhat interesting layer to the fight from a healer perspective, though it only comes up once for me at least in the fight meaning it isn’t that much of an issue. Positioning in phase two is made even more important by the Unknowable Terror which spawns a large area effect on the floor which will most likely kill any non-tank players—this ability is especially dangerous in combination with the need to bait the Oblivion Tears, since you can’t necessarily just run through the middle which is usually the quickest way out.

Now for the damage dealers there is one extra bit to watch out for in phase two: more frequent adds as well as caster adds. This means that the adds actually need to be cleared during phase two like in the first intermission as well as interrupted—interrupt fails along with Unstable Resonance fails are also the most frequent wipe reason for us. All in all it’s not overly complicated, though the amount of damage on the adds needs to be rather precise since they need to be killed through the effect from the storm relic³ and not directly by the damage dealers which means they need to be brought low together.

Phase three

Now the intermission going into phase three is similar as described above, kill the adds then soak the tears² and drop the relic on the mark—though I still have cooldown on the relic, so this time someone else is the primary soaker. The rest however, is much more hectic than any of the earlier phases. Phase three is played in a room that is sligthly smaller than phase two, so baiting the tears correctly is more important. The beams from phase one also make a return, which means you have to be positioned properly in order to avoid getting two stacks but at the same time also baiting properly so that tears aren’t placed incorrectly—for this, we have set spots for the ranges to bait as a group, so that hopefully the baits land correctly. Now the marks still have to be played like before, but now baits at time come in very close proximity to the marks so you have to be on your toes and not stand incorrectly once you’ve gotten rid of your mark. During all of this the adds spawn like before and have to be interrupted and dealt with like before.

In addition, phase three also has a new mechanic: Insatiable Torment. This ability reduces the healing you receive by 100% making you almost heal immune, with two exceptions: absorbs still work, which is why for the marks we use Rapture and shield the tormented players to allow them to survive since they usually need to split from other players; the tormented players also damage players around them leeching health and this is the other way they can be kept alive.

So phase three all in all is mostly familiar to someone who has played the other phases just with much more tight timings and less tolerance for failure. This does present something of a learning curve since you have to get used to knowing where to go beforehand so you’ll be at the right place at the right time but I think we are slowly starting to get over this hurdle. I think our best try was 12% so far and we have had several phase three tries in the last few raid evenings so hopefully this means we can down the boss sometime this reset still—would actually mean we get a decent world ranking again as well, which would be nice. But I guess we’ll know how that went in a week or so.

Well, that didn’t last long. First kill was today.