Flame Leviathan

Flame Leviathan is the first boss encounter in Ulduar, found in the Formation Grounds. Most of the players in this encounter do not use their regular class abilities, but instead use vehicles (similar to drakes in Malygos' third phase). The rest of Ulduar is not accessible until this boss is destroyed.

Vehicle info
At Expedition Base Camp at the very beginning of the instance, players are granted access to salvaged vehicles: five of each type in 25 player, and two of each in 10 player. The choppers only have a driver, while the Siege Engines and Demolishers have a driver and a gunner/passenger each. The individual roles are:


 * Siege Engine Driver – melee/tank style combat - use the ram and the speed booster to destroy close-in
 * Siege Engine Gunner – shoot things from the sky and fire at ground targets
 * Demolisher Driver – ranged damage dealer - launch long-range fireballs and special pyrite barrels that deal massive damage, launch the Gunner onto the Flame Leviathan.
 * Demolisher Gunner – feed the driver's gun with pyrite, and shoot things from the sky. Can also load himself into the gun to be launched on the Flame Leviathan
 * Chopper Driver – AoE kill the Iron Dwarves who are on foot, drop ignitable oil patches to slow down and hurt enemies, collect Demolisher Gunners who have completed their mission, bring pyrite to the Demolishers

After a wipe, the vehicles respawn at full health near the arena where the fight takes place.

Player gear and vehicle stats
Every vehicle has a baseline health value as well as baseline damage values for its various abilities. When a player mounts a vehicle, the baseline values are modified according to the item levels and gear quality the player has equipped at the moment the vehicle is mounted. If a player wants to swap gear (to increase the modifier), the player needs to eject and remount before the new modifier takes effect. Players sometimes wear rather meaningless sets with the highest Item level gear in each slot regardless of stats to maximize the vehicle capabilities.

The driver's gear affects vehicle health and damage output from driver abilities. The gunner's gear affects damage output fom gunner abilities but has no effect on vehicle health. For this reason, better geared players usually are assigned as drivers, and those with lower gear item level are assigned as gunners or get choppers.

The basline stats of the vehicle are multiplied by a modifier which is obtained from the players gear. The following 15 item slots are included in the calculation, all others are not:
 * Head, Neck, Shoulders, Back, Chest, Wrist, Hands, Waist, Legs, Feet, Finger, Finger, Trinket, Trinket, Main hand

To be clear:
 * Each Finger counts as 1 gear slot.
 * Each Trinket counts as 1 gear slot.
 * The Weapon counts as 1 gear slot regardless of whether it is a 1-handed or 2-handed weapon.
 * The slots that do NOT contribute are: Shirt, Tabard, Off hand, and Ranged/Relic.

Each slot contributes to the total modifier equally. The baseline values are reached when the average of these 15 items yields Item level 200. Empty slots contribute a low value close to zero, or  gear yields lower, epic gear of higher item level than 200 yields higher stats than the baseline. When a Demolisher driver wears all epics with an average item level of 245, the vehicle has over 1.4 million HP (more than twice the baseline amount).

Important: '''A vehicle driver must NOT attempt to jump into the passenger seat him/herself more than once during the fight (in order to use passenger abilities). After the boss is pulled, the health of the vehicles is not fixed and every switch halves the Maximum HP of the vehicle.'''

Salvaged Chopper

 * 504,000 HP
 * 1 driver + 1 passenger

Salvaged Demolisher

 * 630,000 HP
 * 50 Energy (Pyrite Ammo)
 * 1 driver + 1 passenger

Salvaged Siege Engine

 * 1,134,000 HP
 * 1 driver + 1 turret controller + 2 passengers (unable to attack)

Trash info
Between the Expedition Base Camp and the area Flame Leviathan is staging there is a large number of trash mobs and structures. Many of the structures start spawning Steelforge Defenders when a player comes within range until they are destroyed. Destroying certain structures (most notably the Hard-Mode towers) sometimes spawns additional enemies which may attack from behind.

Steelforge Defender - 8,316 HP
 * Can be knocked back by demolishers and siege engines.
 * Sunder Armor - applied in melee range, causes a vehicle to take slightly more damage.

Runeforged Sentry - 269,620 HP (heroic)
 * Can be knocked back by demolishers and siege engines.
 * Runed Flame Jets - The Jets of Flame Inflicts 6825 to 7175 Fire damage every 1 sec for 5 sec in a 15 yard cone infront of the caster.

Ulduar Colossus - 315,000 HP
 * These giants move very slowly once stuck in tar, making them easy to be destroyed from range.
 * Shockwave-style casted ability that can be interrupted by siege engines. Hits for a large amount of damage and includes a knock back.

Mechanostriker 54-A 50,400 HP (normal) - 151,200 HP (heroic)
 * Flying type mob that looks similar to an engineer's flying mount.
 * Several packs of these will attack the raid during the trash clear, usually from the direction of one of the towers.
 * Must be killed by the Siege Engine and Demolisher gunners' anti-air rocket ability.

Mechagnome Battletank 1,575,000 HP (normal) - 5,040,000 HP (heroic)
 * Very large spider-type mechanical. Usually you will only encounter two of these in the Flame Leviathan trash. One of them will be down the ramps to the right by the Tower of Life; the other will be up the ramps to the left by the Tower of Flames. They usually cannot be avoided and will aggro onto the raid at some point during the trash clear.
 * Fire beam which can strike a vehicle from great range.
 * Jump attack will occasionally cause this enemy to jump to a different vehicle to attack, inflicting moderate damage in the process.

Destructible structures

 * Storm Beacon – has a portal at the bottom that summons adds. Each beacon controls the respawn from a small radius around. There are 4 rows of 2 or 3 beacons each down the midway to Flame Leviathan as well as two storm beacons next to each enhancing tower, with the exception of the Tower of Frost.
 * Tower of Storms – Found down the narrow hall on the left, just before the repair pad before Flame Leviathan's staging ground.
 * Tower of Flames – Found up the ramps on the left hand side of the midway.
 * Tower of Frost – Found across the bridge on the right just before the repair pad before Flame Leviathan's staging ground.
 * Tower of Life – Found down the ramps on the right hand side of the midway.
 * Each Tower has numerous turrets which shoot fiery boulders at vehicles that come too close, as well as numerous portals similar to the storm beacons which summon adds until the tower is destroyed.

Starting the event
The encounter is started by either talking to the Lore Keeper of Norgannon or Brann Bronzebeard. When talking to Brann, all Defense Towers are inactive and hard mode cannot be invoked. After talking to the Keeper, all four towers are active which is the most difficult form of hard mode. The towers can be individually switched off by destroying them. If all four are destroyed, the encounter is equivalent to normal mode. More loot is gained if more towers are up when the Flame Leviathan is defeated. The extra hard mode loot is gained only with all four towers up.

Hard mode
Each tower not destroyed increases Flame Leviathan's health by 40% (multiplicative).

Additionally each tower has an individual ability which is activated shortly after the fight starts in addition to buffs and debuffs per individual tower:
 * Tower of Storms (Thorim's Hammer) – Boosts Flame Leviathan's Physical Damage by 25%. Thorim's Hammer causes pillars of light to appear and shortly afterward do around 10% (150k or so) damage to any targets under the beam along with a 1% damage AOE to all vehicles. After about 20 seconds this effect ends.
 * Tower of Flames (Mimiron's Inferno) – Boosts Flame Leviathan's Fire Damage by 50%. Mimiron's Inferno causes fiery orbs to fall from the sky, slowly following a predefined path. They start falling where Flame Leviathan entered the room and continue in a clockwise direction in a diamond formation. Orb strikes deals fire damage to all nearby enemies and leave behind a flaming blaze that deals damage over time when touched. This effect lasts for the entire fight.
 * Tower of Frost (Hodir's Fury) – Throughout the fight, White-Teal beams appear and follow players around. The beams don't do damage but after a beam stops moving on top of a vehicle, it calls down a ball of frost that deals frost damage to all nearby vehicles and entombs them in ice where they take an additional 1% damage per second. This ice can be broken by a fire attack.
 * Tower of Life (Freya's Ward) – Decreases Fire Damage dealt to Flame Leviathan by 10%. Freya's Ward spawns a green beam of light in each corner of the room. Plant adds emerge from these beams throughout the fight and assist Flame Leviathan in dealing damage to player vehicles. There are two types of adds.
 * Ward of Life - larger elemental that is the height of flame leviathan. One of these spawns from each corner with each wave. Normal: 317,000 HP. Heroic: 630,000 HP.
 * Writhing Lasher - smaller elemental, about the height of a salvage Demolisher or Siege Engine. Three to five of these spawn from each corner with each wave. Normal: 64,260 HP. Heroic: 190,260 HP.

Normal Mode
After the last row of Storm Beacons there is a row of normal pillars. Beyond this is a roughly square room clear of all obstacles which contains a group of mobs guarding a gate. After this group is killed, the gate opens and Flame Leviathan enters. It is a good idea to kill the mobs from range, so that player vehicles are in a safe distance from Flame Leviathan when it enters.

While mobile, the boss always targets one Siege Engine or Demolisher and tries to ram it (which causes very high damage if successful). The targeted player must kite the boss, preferably using one of the speed boost abilities. The normal kite path is a wide circle along the outer edges of the area. Every 30 seconds, the boss switches to a different target, it also switches when its current target is destroyed.

Roles by vehicle type:
 * Salvaged Chopper:
 * The main role of choppers is to drop Tar in front of the boss as much as possible. Dps boss with Sonic Horn only when Tar is on cooldown.


 * Salvaged Demolisher:
 * Demolishers are ranged damage dealers. For normal mode, keep hurling Boulder at boss is good enough for the driver. Hurling Pyrite Barrel can do more damage but is not necessary. Since hurling Pyrite Barrel consumes pyrite, it is advisable for less experience group not to use Hurling Pyrite Barrel and save the pyrite for Increased Speed. The passenger can damage boss with the Mortar.
 * Demolishers should stay at range from the boss all the time, they are rather fragile and move slowly.
 * Demolisher gunners can simply shoot at the boss using the Mortar. When the Demolisher is chased and Flame Leviathan gets too close, the passenger should use Speed Burst.


 * Salvaged Siege Engine:
 * Siege engines are melee damage dealers and interrupters. Stay near the boss and dps with Ram and Fire Cannon. The driver must take care to save some steam pressure to interrupt boss' Flame Vents with Electroshock.
 * When the boss is about to switch target (some addons such as Deadly Boss Mods give a 5 seconds warning), siege engines should start moving away from the boss. If a siege engine is targeted by the boss, it should start running away from the boss immediately. The driver can use Steam Rush repeatedly. When the boss gets too close, the passenger should use Shield Generator. Keep kiting until the boss change target.

Flame Leviathan is a very easy fight in normal mode. It is doable without the need to stun the boss (which will be explained in the next section). There is also no role / class requirement of the players and the gear requirement of the players is not strict. Therefore, it is possible to pug it.

Normal Mode Pyrite Strategy
The simplest way to defeat Flame Leviathan (and most common in ten-man pugs) is to spam him with Pyrite barrels. Before pulling the last group of trash in front of the gate, the raid should sit at the entrance to the courtyard while Demolisher and Siege Engine gunners shoot down as much Pyrite as they can. After about a minute the area should be littered with enough barrels that Demolishers can attack solely with Pyrite without having to worry about running out of ammunition. Demolisher gunners should concentrate on keeping Pyrite stocks up, Choppers and Siege Engines should attack the boss as usual.

Drivers will still have to be aware if they are being targeted and run away as necessary, but as Flame Leviathan will only last around a minute in normal mode under sustained Pyrite fire, he won't have time to change targets more than once.

Hard Mode
With towers up, the encounter gets increasingly difficult. To beat it, two additional elements compared to normal mode need to be considered: Shutdown and Pyrite. The fight can be simplified by just using Pyrite, but (depending on gear) it may be neccessary to use Shutdown, and then a rather complex choreography needs to take place.

Pyrite
Demolisher drivers can shoot pyrite. This causes a stacking DoT on Flame Leviathan, which at 10 stacks deals about 100-150k damage per tick. In hard mode, all other sources of damage can be ignored, as long as the Demolishers keep the pyrite stacks rolling. To make this possible, the Demolisher gunners must supply their drivers with pyrite. They must shoot it from the sky, and collect it with Grab Crate. The drivers must move so that they are close to pyrite on the ground.

Shutdown
Demolisher gunners can load themselves into the Demolisher's main catapult. The driver can then launch them so that they land on top of Flame Leviathan, near one of the. There are 2 turrets in 10-player mode, 4 in 25-player.

Once the launched player lands atop the Leviathan he will be unable to move and will only be able to melee the turret closest to him. Ranged classes can reach all turrets, so ranged DPS classes are almost always the ones thrown. The turrets will defend themselves with a flame attack, which while not powerful can be problematic. Having a ranged DPS class that can also heal (such as an Elemental Shaman or Moonkin Druid) can help.

The players may eject at any time to be parachuted the ground, although doing so before the Leviathan shuts down is often fatal due to the Leviathan's constant AoE. Players can then jump back into vehicles. Motorcycles, with their sidecars empty, can easily pick up former gunners and ferry them back to their Demolisher seat.

After all turrets are destroyed,and Flame Leviathan goes into an 8 second shutdown, during which it stops moving or dealing damage, uses no abilities, takes 50% more damage and resets the Gather Speed buff stack.

Shutdown is a highly desirable state, but shooting a Demolisher gunner means he no longer gathers pyrite for that Demolisher. A Demolisher can store enough pyrite for 10 shots. If the driver is conservative and shoots only once every 9 seconds just so the debuff stays up, the stock lasts a minute and more, which is in theory ample time for the gunner to destroy the turrets and resume collecting pyrite. In practise, drivers like to have a twitchy trigger finger, and collecting pyrite requires manoeuvering, so it may in effect take longer and the pyrite stack goes down.

Double-man Demolisher Guns
Another idea is to assign two gunners to some demolishers. Prior to pulling the boss, one player can preload in the demolisher gun, and a second player can man the gun. In that state, the preloaded player can be launched, while the demolisher retains a gunner to keep up the pyrite supply. After the first shutdown is over, the second player can load himself, and he can be launched as soon as shutdown is over, even before the first player is brought back to the demolisher.

In 10 player, one chopper is not used, and that player is used as second gunner in one demolisher.

In 25 player, various combinations are possible. If two damage dealers are enough to bring all turrets down fast enough, two choppers can be abandoned and two demolishers get a second gunner. If three damage dealers are needed, one chopper and one Siege Engine are left empty.

Targeting Demolishers
The Flame Leviathan on live servers targets Demolishers as well as Siege Engines. On PTR builds, it only targeted Siege Engines. This was thought to be a bug, but was confirmed to be working as intended.

Changing seats
Currently (2009-06-26) drivers of Demolishers can no longer change seats to either hook their own Pyrite or use the Speed Boost. Upon changing seats (via clicking the open space or change seat key binding), the Demolisher sometimes despawns and the player then dies from Flame Leviathan's AoE effects.

Going through the barrier
It has been reported that if somebody in the raid group pulls the Flame Leviathan while others are left behind the barrier, the boss may go through the barrier and be killed outside anywhere in the instance. After going through the barrier it may attack empty vehicles and players entering the instance while not in combat. Be advised though, that this is considered an exploit and a bannable offense.

This may have been repaired through an undocumented fix as the Flame Leviathan will now reset several seconds after being pulled through the barrier that prevents players from leaving/entering the battle zone. The fix may have been to prevent this glitch and to provide a soft reset for this boss should a vehicle be accidentally left behind the barrier.

10 man Rewards
Leaving towers up for hard mode rewards progressively better loot.
 * 0 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 1x
 * 1 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 2x
 * 2 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 2x +
 * 3 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 3x +  + [Recipe]
 * 4 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 3x +  + [Recipe] + 1x [Hard Loot Item]
 * ''The amount of Runed Orbs and Recipes obtained at various difficulty levels is uncertain. You can help collecting data. See the talk page

25 man Rewards
Leaving towers up for hard mode rewards progressively better loot. Flame Leviathan also has a standard Heroic Ulduar Boss chance of dropping a runed orb, a crafting recipe, and a Fragment of Val'anyr. It has been confirmed that you can have multiple recipes and runed orbs.
 * 0 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 1x
 * 1 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 2x
 * 2 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 2x + 2x
 * 3 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 3x + 2x  + Recipe
 * 4 Towers: 2x [Normal Loot Item] + 3x + 2x  + Recipe + 1x [Hard Loot Item]
 * ''The amount of Runed Orbs and Recipes obtained at various difficulty levels is uncertain. You can help collecting data. See the talk page

Salvage
Engineers with skill 415 or higher can salvage parts from Flame Leviathan.

Items reported salvaged:
 * Eternal Air, Fire, Earth (x4-5 at a time)
 * Cobalt Bars (x20), Titansteel Bar (x1)
 * Volatile Blasting Triggers (x39), Overcharged Capacitors (x5), Cobalt Bolts (x11)
 * motorcycle parts (otherwise vendor purchased): Elementium-plated Exhaust Pipe, Salvaged Iron Golem Parts, Goblin-machined Pistons

''The amount and type of salvage obtained at various difficulty levels is uncertain. You can help collecting data. See the talk page

Quotes

 * Intro
 * say
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 * emote
 * say
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 * Enabling the machines by talking to Brann
 * yell
 * yell
 * say
 * yell
 * yell


 * First mob pulled
 * say
 * say


 * First mob killed
 * say


 * Near the Tower of Life
 * say


 * Near the Tower of Flames
 * say


 * Near the Tower of Frost
 * say


 * Near the Tower of Storms
 * say


 * Near a RX-214 Repair-o-matic Station
 * say


 * Second last-Iron Colossus dead
 * say
 * say
 * say


 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Killing a player
 * yell


 * No Towers active
 * yell


 * At least one Tower active
 * yell
 * say


 * Storm Tower active
 * yell


 * Flame Tower active
 * yell


 * Frost Tower active
 * yell


 * Nature Tower active
 * yell


 * Changing Target
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * Player on top of Flame Leviathan
 * yell


 * Overload Circuit activated
 * yell
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 * Death
 * yell


 * Outro
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell

Sound Files
See Sound Files of Ulduar: Flame Leviathan

10-man encounter
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10-man Hard mode encounter
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25-man encounter
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25-man Hard mode encounter
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