How To: Tank Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.

Cowssa's Guide to Tanking Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.

We're going to focus mostly on bosses and achievements, but there is some notable trash. We'll start with the notable trash.

Scourge Hulk - A giant abomination like the undercity guards. There aren't many of these in the instance at least when compared with other trash types. These hit fairly hard. If you're in a combination of blues and purples but more on the blue side these can easily kill you.  They also have a knockback which does 200% damage.  Pretty nasty stuff!

Ymirjar Savage & Bloodthirsty Tundra Wolf - These are two separate mobs that work together to cause some serious pain. The Savage is a hunter type mob that has two abilities. The first is a fairly potent Damage Over Time ability, nothing you can really do about that though. The second one is Beast's Mark which is something to look out for when they're with Bloodthirsty Tundra Wolves. You take 3770 to 4230 extra damage every time one of the wolves hits you.  Ouch! The Wolves also have an ability called Fixate, which means they'll run off and randomly whack someone else in the party and can't be taunted. Supposedly. I've never actually seen them do this though.

Ymirjar Dusk Shaman - You really want to kill these things first when you get them, or CC them. They have two things that they do. They can heal other mobs which is a giant pain because it's a fairly large heal, and they can turn into a wolf which increases their damage and doubles their attack speed. Ouch! :(

Ymirjar Berserker - These increases the physical damage taken by the tank, and they also fear everything in front of them. (Which should just be the tank) You'll want to pull these far back from where they stand, because they tend to be in areas where a fear can result in an extra group.

And I think that about covers it for trash.  On to the bosses!

Svala Sorrowgrave - This boss is a jerk, mostly because it would seem that I don't have a screenshot of her! The fight starts out mostly as a Tank and Spank type deal (That means your job is EASY!) but every now and then she'll sacrifice someone in the party. This can't be avoided and it's mostly non-lethal. A random member of the party will get teleported to the platform behind the boss and 3 low health adds will spawn. A very large sword will start slowly falling from the sky towards the person that is sacrificed. The group must kill the adds before the sword hits the poor unlucky person it's heading for, and that person must move out from under the sword once they're able to move again. Rinse and Repeat. Easily the easiest boss fight in the instance.

Achievements:  The Incredible Hulk
 - This one is...interesting. If your group is anything like my group...You'll get the achievement but probably die as well. Being hit by one of those mobs as well as the boss is just a little bit painful. The achievement itself is simple enough. You're going to need to grab one of the abomination mobs in the room (There are two) and fight it with the boss. You want to get it's health pretty low and then you want to run it under the sword when the boss does her Ritual of the Sword (Sacrifice) ability. The best way to do this is to run on to the platform and then turn around and take a couple steps back towards the party so that the abomination is standing on the platform but you are not.

There seems to be some disagreement as to what triggers this achievement. A rather angry poster on WoWhead tells us that the sword or the DoT it causes MUST kill the mob for you to get credit, but I'm skeptical since the DoT has a very short duration and our mob was killed several seconds later, just before her second sacrifice, and we still got the achievement.

Gortok Palehoof - This is an interesting fight in that you fight 5 bosses instead of just one.

So about the 4 mini-bosses.  Once the event is started, they come at you one at a time in a random order. Here is who they are and what they do:

Ferocious Rhino - This is...a giant rhino! She has 3 things that she'll do. (I'm assuming she's a she. Deal with it!) A fairly nasty DoT in the style of the crab boss in Slave Pens where it won't go away until the tank is healed to full, an extremely painful attack with an equally painful DoT, and an AoE 2-second knockdown.  Pretty painful! Your job as the tank on this one is easy. I feel kind of bad for the healer though. >.>

Frenzied Worgen - This is really easy and straightforward for the tank as well. This mob does a Mortal Strike type attack and also enrages, which is painful because it hits fairly hard to start with.

Ravenous Furbolg - This mob may look cute and cuddly, but she's a bitch! Resist the urge to run up and hug. This mob has a chain lightning, a fear, and...something rather unique. The chain lightning and the fear are easy enough to deal with, but have your taunt button ready because the third ability is pretty much "Taunt or Die!" See, this cute and cuddly teddy bear will randomly turn around and start smacking someone else in the party, like one of those squishy rogues. If you're not fast whoever it smacks is going to die, and fast. I've seen this mob 1-2 shot rogues. It's not pretty.

Massive Jormungar - This mob will summon adds from time to time. A well timed Thunder Clap will easily handle those. What you want to look out for is the poison bolt for 3k or so damage that also reduces your armor by 1,000 and stacks.

Ok, so those are the minibosses. What you want to do is look at which one the little "orb" is channeling to, and you want to run over and stand in front of that one to pick it up as soon as it becomes active so that it doesn't wreak havoc on your group.

Now for the boss himself.  He has a cleave ability so the melee DPS need to make sure to stay behind him. He also randomly throws spears at people in the party that hit for 3k and also have a 3k/tick DoT.  The main thing to look out for though is that he does a withering roar which reduces your health by 1,000 every time it hits you and it stacks. The faster you kill him the better.

Skadi the Ruthless - This fight can be painful! It's a shattered halls/Zul'Aman style gauntlet where mobs keep coming until you complete an objective. Here the objective is to have someone in the party loot the harpoons that the mobs drop and fire them at Skadi when he's in range of the harpoon launchers. He's flying overhead during the gauntlet event. He's far from harmless at this point though. He'll freeze half of the path (and it's a narrow path) and if you get caught in it..Well..dead! This event tends to take a toll on the healer's mana, but if your healer and you think you're up to it, you can just run to the end of the gauntlet and grab all of the mobs at once and hope for the best. This is the way I like to do it.

You need to hit Skadi with Six Harpoons in order to kill his drake and force him to come down and fight you.  Communication is fairly important at this point because he just drops down and runs off to kill someone. So your harpoon person should tell you when they're about to hit him with the 6th harpoon so that his coming down and killing your healer isn't a surprise. Once he's on foot the adds stop spawning and the freezing stops.

So now that he's on foot there are a couple of things to watch out for. He does a knockdown, a poison spear throw (at anyone, not just you) and a whirlwind. He also hits fairly hard. (I say fairly hard entirely too often.) When he starts to whirlwind he'll pick one person in the party and he'll chase them. It's important that melee get away from him, you get away from him, and the person he's chasing runs far away from him. The whirlwind will prove fatal for anyone except the tank. (It's best you avoid it too though.) I tend to intervene whoever he's targeting (if they're ranged) so that if they get whacked once it'll hit me instead and it also gets me away from the whirlwind quickly. If nobody dies during the gauntlet, and nobody dies to whirlwind, you should be fine. :)

Achievements: My Girl Loves to Skadi All the Time and Lodi Dodi We Loves The Skadi

In order to do the first one, you're going to want to save up six harpoons instead of shooting them at him one at a time. Once you have 6 harpoons you want to wait until he's in range and then hit him with all 6 in one go. Not too difficult, but I wouldn't recommend trying it until you're used to the event the "normal" way. As far as the second one goes...Well...Good luck! I haven't gotten that one yet.

King Ymiron

This event is somewhat complicated, but not very difficult. When you first enter his room you'll see 4 longboats, 2 on either side of the room. These are important because every 20% of the fight he'll AoE Stun the group, run over to one, and get a shiny new ability. The ability goes away when he runs to the next boat. Here is what each boat does for him:

(Directions are your left/right facing him.)

Left Boat closest to him: Giant Glowy Orb of Death (This is the one you need to watch out for.)
Right Boat Closest to him: Spirit Burst - AoE Shadow attack for 4-5K
Left Boat Closest to entrance: Summons 4 adds after a few seconds that can be AoE'd down.
Right Boat Closest to entrance: Stackable debuff that increases damage taken.

The order in which he runs to the boats is random! Everything except for the Giant Glowy Orb of Death (GGOD) is relatively non-lethal.

When he runs to the Giant Glowy Orb of Death Boat wait until he summons the orb on the floor, note the position of the orb, and run far away. Communicate with your healer that you'll probably be running to the other side of the boats, so be careful about Line of Sight. If the orb touches you, Ymiron, or any member of your party...It's painful. Very, very, VERY painful. So don't let it touch anyone.

That covers his special abilities...Now lets go over his normal ones.

He has a dispellable disease that does damage over time and reduces healing by 25%, a dark slash that deals 50% of your health in damage, (Ouch!) and Bane. Bane is the normal ability that you have to watch out for. When he starts casting this...Stop attacking. Turn off auto attack and wait for it to be dispelled/spell stolen/purged/etc. If anyone hits him while Bane is active he does a 5-6K AoE for every attack that hits him. It isn't pretty.

He hits very hard with just his normal swings alone, but he can be disarmed so disarm him if you get in trouble. If you can survive the Giant Glowy Orb of Doom, and you can get Bane dispelled quickly, you really shouldn't have any issue with this fight.

Achievements: King's Bane - Just be sure to turn off auto-attack and hope that all of the DPS stops attacking. Sounds easy enough, but I still haven't gotten this one.

Hope this helped, and good luck with your tank sword farming! :)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am and is filed under Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.