I had a chance to test out one of the new Ulduar bosses on the Public Test Realm the other night. It was a full guild run, and the boss we were after was The Flame Leviathan. We were attempting the 10 man version of the fight, and the encounter was… interesting. You won’t be using your class skills (for the most part) because you will be in vehicles. Unlike Phase 3 of the Malygos fight, I actually enjoyed this fight.

Image from MMO-Champion, obviously.

The Gauntlet

Before you get to fight the boss, you will have to battle your way through an army of Iron Dwarves, robots, and helicopters. You will be using the vehicles at this time, and can easily mow through all the mobs. This is a perfect time to get used to all your abilities. There are a few things can take out on the way to the boss, but they are optional. One of those things are pillars which will keep spawning mobs unless you destroy them. Those you pretty much want to destroy while you drive past them. The others will determine the difficulty of the boss.

After making your way through the army of Iron Dwarves, you will reach a gate guarded by two giants. After taking out the two giants, The Flame Leviathan will bust through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man and the boss encounter will start.

Hard Mode

There are four towers located in this big battlefield area: The Flame Tower, Ice Tower, Lightning Tower, and Life Tower. For each tower you destroy, The Flame Leviathan will gain a new ability. Destroy the Flame Tower, he gains a Fire attack, Ice Tower, he gains an Ice Attack, Lighting Tower, he gains a Lighting attack, Life Tower, he can spawn these plant mobs. Leaving all the towers up puts the fight into “Easy Mode”, destroying all the towers puts him into “Hard Mode”.

We actually misread the “Orbit-uary” achievement, thinking that taking out all the towers will put him into “Easy Mode” and learned that we actually put him into “Hard Mode”. But since we didn’t have too much difficulty, we decided to reset the instance and only leave the Life Tower up, making it 3/4 Hard Mode. Which also has its own “Nuked from Orbit” achievement.

The Vehicles

There are three types of vehicles to choose from for this fight: Siege Engine, Chopper, and Demolisher. For each of those vehicles the driver has a few set abilities, and the passenger has a few set abilities. Each vehicle can only have one driver and one passenger.

Siege Engine: This battle tank vehicle acts as the main tank/kiter for the boss. The driver has the ability to Steam Dash to put some distance away from the boss, and Electroshock to interrupt one of the boss’s ability. The passenger has the ability to shoot rockets at the boss, the ability to shield the tank for a short amount of time, and the ability to shoot down air units (which drop ammo).

Demolisher: This is the catapult type vehicle which will act as the main DPS for the boss, but will sometimes have to kite the boss also. The passenger has the ability to use Grab Crate on the items which are dropped when an air unit is killed. After grabbing one, they have to Reload Ammo for the driver to use to DPS. They also have the ability to use that ammo to get a burst of speed (in case the boss is after them). The passenger also have the ability to load themselves for the Demolisher to use them as ammo! The driver has the ability to shoot the ammo in which the passenger loads, which also means the passenger if he/she loaded themselves.

Chopper: These are the quick and versatile motorcycles which is used as the utility vehicle for this fight. The Chopper usually starts off with out a passenger (no passenger abilities), so the driver does all the work. They can drop Tar which can slow down the boss if you kite him over it. The tar can also be ignited to do damage to the boss. The Chopper can also do some DPS with its Sonic Horn or run away with Speed Boost. Another important responsibility for the Chopper is to pick up any passengers that the Demolisher may have shot away.

The Gear Requirement

Wait you’re in a vehicle, your gear doesn’t matter right? It actually does! The amount of health your vehicle has, and the amount of damage it does, depends on the item levels (ilvl) of the gear you are wearing. So if you are 25 man epic’d out with ilvl 213 gear and up, you will have better stats than a player that is 10 man epic’d out with ilvl 200 gear. So if your in a guild which is clearing Naxx, Maly, and Sarth regularly, make sure you don’t shard all unwanted gear. That unwanted ilvl 213 Cloth Belt might come in handy for the next expansion.

Also if you are one of those unlucky passengers getting shot out of the Demolisher, since you will be out of the protection of a vehicle, you will need to be geared enough to survive outside for a good amount of time.

The Strategy

If you look at each vehicle’s abilities for driver and passenger, you can pretty much see how this fight plays out. Siege Engines kite, Choppers slow, Demolishers DPS. During the entire time, the boss will continually do raid wide damage, and since there isn’t a way to repair the vehicles, it really is a DPS race to take him out before he takes you out.

Remember when I said Demolishers had the ability to launch their passengers? There is a reason for that. By shooting the passenger onto the boss, those players can take out the npc’s which are shooting rockets at the raid, and mess around with a few buttons cause an Overload Circuit. During this time, the boss goes into a shutdown mode, and will take additional damage.

Also depending on which towers you leave up, you will have to dodge a few giant lasers of doom. If you ever played Command and Conquer: Generals, the lasers are like the USA’s Particle Beam Cannon. It looks like THIS (skip to the 1:40 mark), but a bit less destructive. You know you have to avoid any lasers you see.

The Loot

For clearing the 10 man version of the fight with three towers up, we only got two pieces of ilvl 219 gear. I’m guessing Blizzard hasn’t implemented additional drops for each difficulty mode yet (or else we’ll be seeing one piece of loot for two towers up, and a /golfclap for one or zero towers up). This is what we got:

• [Lifespark Visage]
• [Kinetic Ripper]

The cloth caster helm stats are a bit better than the Tier 7.5 Helm, but that socket bonus isn’t too Mage friendly. Hopefully we hear some of this “Make Spirit better for Mages” news sometime soon. The First Weapon looks like Fulgore’s (from Killer Instinct) weapon, and has a little electric spark which moves up and down the blade of the weapon.

Meanwhile the caster helm, if shown, will shave your head, and turn you into a ninja with an Olympic medal.

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• PTR Patch 3.1.0 – Equipment Manager
• Replaced My First Piece of Gear!
• PTR Patch 3.2 Testing: Frostbolts and Mounts and Titles, Oh My!
• PTR Patch 3.1.0 – Random Screenshots