The Antechamber of Ulduar: Kologarn

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. This section is called The Antechamber of Ulduar and comes after you break into Ulduar. We’re going to be taking a look at the bosses within the Antechamber of Ulduar who are blocking your way to the Keepers of Ulduar. Today, we’ll be focusing on Kologarn.

Defeating Kologarn is the only way to move past the Shattered Walkway. When he dies, his body becomes part of the path and allows you to move on to the rest of Ulduar, especially the Keepers who are very important if you wish to make it all the way through Yogg-Saron. Kologarn is a fight about focused DPS and timing and you can shatter his arms. Occasionally, you will have to do so if you wish to keep the raid from wiping.

Kologarn

Abilities:

• Focused Eyebeam – Deals 2,000-4,000 damage every one second. Two beams form around the player, then there is a raid warning, and then they begin following the player.
• Overhead Smash – Inflicts physical damage and applies a stacking debuff called Crunch Armor (Normal: 20% reduction for 6 seconds. Heroic: 25% reduction for 45 seconds.)
• One-Armed Overhead Smash – Inflicts physical damage and applies a stacking debuff called Crunch Armor (Normal: 20% reduction for 6 seconds. Heroic: 25% reduction for 45 seconds.) Less damage than normal Overhead Smash and is only cast when Kologarn has a dead arm.
• Stone Shout – (2 Supercharges) Increases damage done to the target by 200% and causes Meltdown after 30 seconds
• Petrifying Breath – Inflicts 14,000-21,000 Nature damage every second. Applies Brittle Skin which increases damage taken by 20% for 8 seconds. Only cast if nobody is in melee range.
• Stone Grip – Grabs targets (1 in Normal, 3 in Heroic) and incapacitates them, inflicting 3,000-3,500 Physical damage every second. On Normal Ulduar, 100,000 damage must be dealt to the arm to free those who were grabbed. Heroic requires 480,000 damage to free those who were grabbed. (Cast by the Right Arm)
• Shockwave – Inflicts 9,000-16,000 damage to the whole raid. (Cast by the Left Arm)
• When either arm dies, Kologarn loses life equal to the HP of the arms.

The Fight

The fight is pretty simple for hunters to tell you the truth. My raid leader always had us line up on the little diamonds between the tiles and then we would split people into “Forward” and “Back.” The “forward” group would move up one row of diamonds once the fight started and if we had eyebeams on us, we would run forward, let the beams catch up and then run left. If you were in the “back” group, you would run to the doorway, do a loop around the entrance there and then run back to your spot. Eyebeams will be the worst part of this fight for any hunter simply because you have to move and hope you have a good distance on them. If you are a survival hunter, this also causes you to lose Sniper Training. As a hunter, your job will be to DPS the arms of Kologarn. Your raid should typically only worry about the Right Arm unless you are going for an achievement, so start on the right arm and burn it down. If people get Stone Gripped, kick it up a notch and help free them. When Kologarn’s arm is destroyed, some adds will spawn, so a tank needs to pick them up. Hunters can help AoE the adds down unless your raid leader wants you to burn the chest. Every time an arm is destroyed, it lowers Kologarn’s HP by 15% (the HP of the arm), so they will be the fastest way to down him as well. If you can survive the Shockwaves from the Left Arm and you can burn both the Right Arm and the chest, the fight will end without any significant problems for the raid.

The Loot:

10 man:

• Shawl of the Shattered Giant – Good cloak with agi/stam, as well as hit rating.

25 man:

• Wrathstone – Nice crit trinket for hunters that also has a nice Use effect.
• Malice – Not a bad sword for dual wielding hunters.
• Giant’s Bane – Such a wonderful gun that I recently obtained. It’s similar to Envoy of Mortality from KT.
• Shoulderpads of the Monolith – Good shoulders if your feral druids and rogues don’t already have it. You’d lose out on having intellect, but they are nice.

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!