Dragon Soul Tanking – 10M Ultraxion

Ultraxion

More an abomination of dark energy than a dragon, Ultraxion has spent his short life absorbing the essence of captured nether dragons. Ultraxion is the only twilight dragon Deathwing has praised, and his arrogance is overshadowed only by the crackling energies surging through his twisted form. Loyal to his master, Ultraxion swears to bring about the fall of Wyrmrest Temple. ~Dungeon Journal

Ultraxion is a fairly boring fight as long as you can manage to use CDs and click a button at the correct times. For me, the trash prior to the fight is pretty mind-numbing as well–all I do is run around and taunt and my co-tank picks up the adds off me and pulls them into the center circle for the DPS to kill.

Ultraxion Mechanics

Ultraxion is basically a 1 phase fight, so let’s talk mechanics.

• Twilight Shift (Raid) – Announces the beginning of the encounter. The fight is done in the Twilight Realm, and only by clicking a button, Heroic Will, can you leave the realm of twilight.
• Heroic Will (Raid) – Used by the raid team for avoiding death to Fading Light and Hour of Twilight. By timing the click correctly, the player is pulled out of the Twilight realm for 5 seconds, but they are unable to attack for those 5 seconds. The more comfortable you become with the fight (and your lag), you can time button usage in the last seconds of the Fading Light debuff or the Hour of Twilight cast, so you only remain outside of the Twilight Realm for a split second.
• Unstable Monstrosity (Raid) Shadow - An arcing attack that hits the raid for 300K damage, spread across all players in the Twilight realm, every 6 seconds. This mechanic is one of the reasons you stack for the fight. Every minute that Ultraxion remains in combat results in 1 second shaved off his cast time of the spell.
• Fading Light (Current tank and 1 DPS) – Cast on the tank currently tanking Ultraxion and one DPS (this is NEVER cast on a healer). Tanks will need to taunt swap and use their Heroic Will button to leave the Twilight Realm to survive. Failure to leave the Twilight Realm when Fading Light times out will result in instant death on the player. Failure to taunt swap results in some poor DPS getting killed due to Ultraxion resetting his threat.
• Hour of Twilight (Raid) Shadow – A single 300K damage burst to each player remaining in the Twilight Realm when the spell is finished casting. In 10M Normal mode, only 1 player needs to eat the cast and survive it. Tanks can swap off on this duty (1 tank take evens, 1 take odds), but make sure you don’t miss your soak. If both tanks use Heroic Will and there is no one to absorb the damage of Hour of Twilight, the Aspects will die and the raid will wipe.
• Twilight Eruption (Raid) – If 6 minutes pass without a kill, Ultraxion explodes and wipes the raid.
• Twilight Burst (Raid) Shadow - If the raid is not within melee range, Ultraxion will cast Twilight Burst which hits each raid member with roughly 75K in shadow damage every second. In addition to the attack being unable to be resisted, it also increases magic damage taking by 50% for 6 seconds and stacks.

If you have a custom UI that may hide the Heroic Will button, you can create your own by opening your macros pane and creating a macro with /click ExtraActionButton1 as the text. Stick it on your bars are you are good to go.

Aspect Buffs

Each aspect will grant members of the raid with a certain buff. The tanks and the raid do not need to seek out their buffs (Last Defender of Azeroth and Timeloop, respectively), but the healers will need to be aware of their buff spawn timers in order to grab crystals.

• Last Defender of Azeroth – Gifted to the tanks by Thrall, it reduces the CD on defensive cooldowns by 50% and increases their duration by 100%. Thrall casts this spell at the very beginning of the fight.
• Gift of Life (Red) – Cast 1.5 minutes into the fight, Alexstraza will buff 1 healer with a spell that increases all healing done by 100%.
• Essence of Dreams (Green) – Cast 2.5 minutes into the fight, Ysera will buff 1 healer with a spell that causes each heal cast by that healer to be mirrored and distributed across all members of the raid.
• Source of Magic (Blue) – Cast 3.5 minutes into the fight, Kalecgos will buff 1 healer with a spell that reduces the mana cost of all spells by 75% and boosts spell haste by 100%.
• Timeloop - Cast 5 minutes into the fight, Nozdormu buffs your raid with the ability to die, once. The first blow that a player receives that will kill them will instead heal them to 100% of their health, but remove the Timeloop buff.

Icy Veins recommends the healing buffs go as follows:

• Gift of Life – Restoration Druids, Restoration Shamans, Holy Priests
• Essence of Dreams – Taken by healers who heal for the largest amount (gear/ability)
• Source of Magic – Holy Paladins

2/1 Ultrax WoL Spell Usage

Paladin Pointers

• Mirror of Broken Images is still in play for this–use it every time it is up to reduce the damage taken from at least 2 Unstable Monstrosity casts at the beginning (remember that these will get quicker as you go).
• Keep Divine Protection glyphed for when you are eating Hour of Twilight. Chain it with another CD so your health doesn’t dip too low (I usually try to go for Ardent Defender, but don’t forget Guardian of Ancient Kings).
• You can cast raidwall every minute with the 4pc bonus. Put it to good use!

Glyphing Thoughts

These are my picks, YMMV.

• Prime: Seal of Truth, Shield of the Righteous

Final option is a bit flexible, depending on your gearing and raid. My thoughts:

• Crusader Strike: Valid for fact that fight is a single mob fight. Increased crit results in more damage and a slightly faster boss death.
• Judgement: Totally dependent on if you have the 2pc T13 bonus which grants you an absorb shield each time you judge. Basically you get a larger absorb, which helps to reduce healing required, but I haven’t looked to see how much of a bonus you get. Probably not worth it in the long run, but every little bit helps.

Pick whichever one you feel most comfortable with! I typically glyph for threat over survivability, but it’s personal preference.

• Major: Divine Protection, Focused Shield, Lay on Hands

My logic: Focused Shield because it’s a single mob fight. Lay on Hands for the shorter duration (survivability again, but there’s really nothing stopping you from having a shorter CD on this “save your ass” spell). Divine Protection for the magic damage reduction.