Strategy: Kologarn

You'll notice I skipped a couple of bosses between Deconstructor and Kologarn. That isn't a co-incidence. Largely, the tanking assignments on those bosses are so straightforward that a guide wouldn't really help very much. I may go back to them later, but for now I want to turn to the somewhat tricky boss, Kologarn. He's the bridge between the Antechamber and the Shattered Walkway in Ulduar and he's a lot of fun. One of the best parts about this fight is that it gives us a real chance to use our block sets that otherwise would collect dust.

My tanking role on this boss is to tank the pack of earth elementals that spawn when his arm dies, but it's a much trickier fight than just that. There are several different phases and lots of ways that you can accidentally wipe the raid if you're not careful, so I'll go through all of those in turn.

First, there are a couple things to note about the mechanics of the fight. Kologarn starts with two "hands" a right hand and a left hand. The right hand is really deadly, and we kill it quickly. When that hand dies, it spawns a bunch of earth elementals. Also, he occasionally targets someone in the raid with eye beams that will follow that person, killing everyone in his or her path.

This fight requires a combination of dps and AoE tanking. At the beginning of the fight, our goal is to help kill the right arm as quickly as possible. Fortunately, adds can't spawn when the arm is out, so we don't need to worry about any conflict there. I pop wings and help chew threw the arm as fast as I possibly can. The arm will periodically grab someone, even you, but there's really nothing you can do about that. It's a lot like the cauldron on Ignis. So, here we do what we do on Deconstructor, burn, burn. There's no real worry about stealing aggro as the arm has no aggro table.

When the arm dies is when things become tricky. He immediately spawns a bunch of "Rubble" which have point blank AoE attacks. I need to pick these up and fast. Since I know exactly where the rubbles will spawn, I have a Consecration waiting for them. Then I toss a shield and a glyphed Hammer of the Righteous. This usually cements aggro on them. If I missed one, I grab it with Exorcism or Hand of Reckoning. Do not use Righteous Defense. If you taunt an add targetting the main tanks, you will taunt Kologarn, he will Petrifying Breath and the entire raid will die.

The trick then is to pull them immediately away from the raid, because those AoE attacks will kill anyone standing too close. I then quietly go into a corner and toss out my usual threat cycle, prioritizing multi-target attacks. The mobs tend to die reasonably quickly, and I go dps the boss for a little bit until the arm respawns.

The really tricky part is if I get eyebeamed when I'm AoE tanking. This has only happened twice, but it can be absolutely deadly when it happens. Don't panic and be prepared. What I have written below is what I did the second time this happened. The first time, well...we won't mention that.

When this happens, you should be on the right side of the boss tanking a bunch of adds. If you're the target of the eyebeam, it will be very obvious, since you're entirely by yourself. If the eyebeams come after you, you are the target. The big issue is that not only am I dragging the eyebeam behind me, I am dragging five or six adds doing PBAoEs. I really don't want to drag those through the raid.

Since there is some space behind me, I turn and run away from the boss to his right along the edge of the chasm. Since I'm turning my back in an AoE situation, I pop Divine Protection here. This is good practice in general: if you need to turn your back on an attacking enemy, pop Divine Protection. I go about ten yards, and them start along the back wall toward the center of the room, planning to kite the eyebeams back and forth along the back wall. I also call out in vent, "It's on me. I'm at the back of the room. Stay back". Fortunately, the raid is used to staying away since the back of the room is where we usually kite the eye beams. Hopefully at this point, the dps are paying attention and are still AoEing down the mobs. The time I did this properly, the mobs died a little before the eyebeam wore off.

That's really the only tricky part, and there's a good chance it won't happen. Other than that, this fight is fairly straightforward.