Ultraxion Post-Kill Notes Considering Making it Easier

Apologies if you're looking for a strategy guide.  This is a musing look at making Ultraxion easier for me next time.

I know I wasn't dps'ng at 100% efficiency on the kill.  I could have been doing more things in the seconds right before needing to click the button... but it wasn't a safe option.  Especially when the Fading Light debuff sometimes started at only 5sec and was hidden behind buffs.  I could probably get a bit more dps out with practice.   1-5K dps maybe.  But there are other safer options.

One would be: I could reduce my dps but bring a cunning pet that increases spell damager's dps (via  Lightning Breath). The cat or wolf does 3.1k dps and has direct synergy with me.  A cat brings buffs like Roar of Courage, that may be covered elsewhere -- and a wolf brings Furious Howl.  But I could lessen some of the damage with a few Roars of Sacrifice... though probably the only the last one toward the end of the fight is needed.  I don't know what this will come out to be dps-wise.  We'd have to check all the buffs.  More to figure out... and it'll vary based on raid makeup.

Another idea: ensure everyone is back in shadow before heroism is fired off.  (+2K dps)  I know I missed it at least on one attempt.  The kill graph looks like my dps went down during heroism compared to everyone else.  So I'm thinking it happened and I missed it.

Another idea: don't have a dps die and need a brez (+2K dps)  We frequently had dps die because they watched Deadly Boss Mods timers or screamed wrong things in their ears.  Make sure DBM is up to date and realize that the timers only show when an ability is about to start casting.

Another idea: cycle in people with various 100% defensive CDs.  Deterrence looks to mitigate 100%, so they could stay in instead of a tank taking damage which needs healing.  Pallys could bubble, etc.

Yet another this-time crazy idea: Go with two healers.  Healing is "light" until the last third of the fight.  Bring a person who can do some reasonable dps in the first 2/3rds of the fight and then start healing (with the third crystal's help).  The extra damage might mean far less time in healing-hell time.

Alizabal

A friend dropped me a raid strat for Alizabal, the new BH PvP boss which comes out today.  (Sadly, I don't have the source for the strat, so I'll only quote part of it here.)

Everyone, including the affected player, should remain stacked when the boss casts Seething Hate. This strategy will effectively mitigate the otherwise unsurvivable damage from this ability by distributing it between 8/23 players. Please note that even stepping a few yards away from the group can have devastating consequences as the damage is only distributed between players within 6 yards of the affected player.

This has me wondering.  Six yards the important number. And six yards is very very tiny.  Very important. You do not want to eat it by yourself.

So. Can hunters shoot the boss from melee or not? (Some bosses and boss adds allow it, some don't.)  If they don't, we will need to get melee to swing from the farthest out they can -- and we'll stand a hair away from them.

It looks like there's a 8 second cooldown on the ability, but it also appears that it may be an instant cast.

Progression

I'm kinda thankful that our progression slowed down a bit.  In one night, we were 4/8 in DS 10man normal.  The second night, and we're now 5/8.  We "only" got one new boss down and a bunch of tries on the gunship.  If we went too fast this would be gone in a flash.  And the heroic versions don't look too fun.  That said, the gunship doesn't look too hard.

Elusive Pet Bars

Can we say, "Yay!"?

Pet bars will no longer sometimes disappear when zoning.