The Siege of Ulduar: Flame Leviathan Guide

We’re going to do something a little different today. Instead of looking at class mechanics or specs, we’re going to look at the latest raid available to you guys. Ulduar, as you all probably know, is similar to Naxx in the way that it is divided into four sections. The initial section is called The Siege of Ulduar and is all about breaking into Ulduar where you’ll later face some familiar NPCs (if you’ve done some of the larger quest chains at least). Let’s take a deeper look into how exactly you break into Ulduar. Today, we’ll be focusing on Flame Leviathan.

Flame Leviathan

Abilities

The fight with Flame Leviathan doesn’t really require much from a hunter, or any other class for that matter. Instead, the first boss of Ulduar requires the use of vehicles and their HP and damage is based on the average item level of your gear. As long as most of your gear is around item level 200+ you’ll be fine. Even if a piece or two is lacking, the fight isn’t too difficult and you shouldn’t die. To start off, let’s take a look at the three types of vehicles.

Siege Engine

The Siege Engine is the closest thing you’ll get to a tank. They basically have a speed boost and a ram. The passenger of the Siege Engine gets a nifty little gun that acts as both a cannon and an anti-air rocket launcher. For enemies on the ground, as well as Flame Leviathan, you’ll use the cannon portion of the gun and for the helicopter enemies you’ll use the rockets. All the driver has to worry about is getting closer to the enemies and ramming things.

For the fight against Flame Leviathan, the driver will have an important role. The driver will be kiting Flame Leviathan for part of the fight if he chooses to target you. When this happens, you’ll want to get as far as away as possible and as quickly as possible. If Flame Leviathan gets a little close and you’re afraid to get hit, hit your Steam Rush ability and you’ll move out of his way with ease. Just make sure you aren’t facing a wall because you can’t turn while Steam Rush is active. As a passenger, if you feel that Flame Leviathan is getting close, you can mitigate some damage with Shield Generator. Make sure to use it sparingly though as it has a one minute cooldown.

Demolisher

The Demolisher is your “DPS” vehicle. The driver has a few things at their disposal, such as Pyrite and regular shots. Pyrite is used to light up Tar dropped by the Choppers and served little purpose other than that. The passenger in the Demolisher has a couple tasks as well. They are able to pick up Pyrite that drops on the ground and they can shoot as well. They can also load themselves into a launcher portion of the vehicle so that the driver can throw them at Flame Leviathan. Hunters should NEVER be a passenger of a Demolisher.

Demolishers can serve as a tank in the Flame Leviathan fight because he will randomly choose a Siege Engine or Demolisher to follow. Unlike the Siege Engine, the passenger of the Demolisher has control of the speed boosts. If you feel that Flame Leviathan is getting a little close, hit Increased Speed, but do so sparingly as it uses up 25 pyrite which only regenerates if you pick more up. You’ll also need to use Load Into Catapult at your raid leader’s command. As a driver, your job during the fight is to kite the boss if he is targeting you. Otherwise, just keep shooting at the boss, and when the raid leader tells you to, use Throw Passenger. Make sure your yellow targeting bubble is on top of Flame Leviathan or you may fire your passenger too far.

Chopper

The Chopper is a small vehicle that is also one of the most important vehicles for the fight. Choppers can drop Tar that can be lit up by Siege Engines and they can also pick up passengers on the ground. Choppers also move rather fast and can be used to drag mobs to the group.

For the fight against Flame Leviathan, the job of the Chopper is DPS and recovery. You’ll want to drop Tar down in front of Flame Leviathan so that the Demolishers can light it up. You can also use Sonic Horn to DPS the boss, but your main job will be to pick up people who fall off of Flame Leviathan when his system shuts down. You’ll have to drive up to them, let them hop in and then you will use First Aid Kit to heal up any damage that wasn’t taken care of before they fell off of Flame Leviathan. While the system is shut down, drive the passengers back to their original vehicles so they can prepare to do it all again.

The Fight

The first part of the Flame Leviathan fight is a gauntlet. There’s actually two ways to do this gauntlet, one of which involves destroying towers and one makes it so you don’t have to. If you talk to the smaller NPC at the entrance of Ulduar, you can have him start the event where no towers are activated at all and all the group has to do is go straight through the instance destroying the Iron Dwarves and the towers they spawn from. If you talk to the bigger NPC, then you have four activated towers, each of which adds a level of difficulty to the actual fight with Flame Leviathan, but you can go through and destroy them individually.

Work your way through the gauntlet and you’ll end up at a dead end with some big Iron Dwarf enemies in front of you. When you clear this last bit of trash, Flame Leviathan bursts through and the fight begins. Siege Engines and Demolishers will be targeted by Flame Leviathan at random and he pursues them for about 20 seconds. All you have to do as a driver is avoid Flame Leviathan and you’ll be fine. On Siege Engines, the passenger can activate a shield if they feel that Flame Leviathan is getting too close. When he’s about 5-10 seconds away from switching targets, everyone should disperse and get some distance. Randomly throughout the fight, the drivers of the Demolishers should be throwing their passengers (hopefully casters) on top of Flame Leviathan where they will destroy the turrets on his back causing an overload. When this happens, the people on top of Flame Leviathan will parachute down and the Choppers have to come by and pick them up and drive them over to Demolishers again. Everyone else should be DPSing Flame Leviathan. (Refer back to the vehicle sections for more information)

That’s basically all you have to do, just rinse and repeat the DPS and launching people and Flame Leviathan goes down in no time at all.

The Loot

10 Man:

• Pyrite Infuser – Great trinket for people like me who have trouble being at the hit cap. Plus, it’s like a Mirror of Truth for the Chance on Hit proc.
• Kinetic Ripper – I’ve never personally used a fist weapon, but the stats that we hunters use are there. I wouldn’t say this should be an “OMG Hunter Weapon” moment, but if your rogues/shamans have it, you can always roll.

25 Man:

• Rising Sun – I wouldn’t use a thrown weapon because they are better for rogues, but if all your rogues have it and you need an immediate upgrade, go for it. I’ve never used a thrown weapon on my hunter, so I assumed it would work. “Ranged Weapon” on the tooltips means Bow/Gun as Todd pointed out in the comments below. This may not even be worth the “immediate” upgrade I mentioned previously.
• Gloves of the Fiery Behemoth – Armor Penetration and some haste. It’s not bad but I prefer the ever elusive crit rating that doesn’t appear much in Ulduar.
• Mechanist’s Bindings – It’s got crit, it’s got haste and AP. You lose some Intellect. Overall let it go to rogues, but it’s not bad for hunters either.

We’ll be continuing this guide for all the bosses of Ulduar, so keep an eye out for later bosses in future articles. If you’ve got special tips that your group uses to defeat these bosses, be sure to leave them in the comments!