Ulduar: XT-002 Deconstructor Strategy (+Hard Mode) Guide

General Information

Forth boss in the newest World of Warcraft raid instance Ulduar. He’s the first mechanical Boss (power to the Gnomes!!) and has approximate 25.000.000 Health Points on Heroic and 5.250.000 Health Points on Normal. It’s also know that he as an optional Hard Mode for the hardcore raiders!

Notice: While it’s possible to kill most of the bosses in any order, this is usually the chronological order (if you don’t skip any bosses)

Abilities

• Tympanic Tantrum: Deals 10% damage every 1 sec for 12 sec. Nearby enemies are also dazed for the duration. 2 sec cast / Channeled
• Light Bomb: Charges the target with divine energy, causing them to sear nearby allies for 9 sec.
• Gravity Bomb: Charges the target with dark energy, causing them to explode and pull in nearby allies after 9 sec. (Gravity Bomb)
• Gravity Bomb: Pulls enemies within 10 yards into a gravity well, dealing 19000 to 21000 damage. Instant

Hard Mode Abilities

• Heartbreak: The heart of the XT-002 Deconstructor has been severed, removing the combat limitations of the XT-002 Deconstructor. Damage increased by 30%. Health increased by 40%.
• Void Zone: Summon a Void Zone that deals 7500 Shadow damage to enemies that stand within it. This is spawned by Gravity Bomb
• Life Spark: In hard mode, Light Bomb also spawns an add called Life Spark. This add will repeatedly cast Static Charged
• Static Charged: Deals Nature damage to all enemies within 500 yards every 3 sec.

Achievements

Heroic

• Heroic: Nerf Engineering - Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor without him recovering any health from XS-013 Scrapbots on Heroic Difficulty.
• Heroic: Nerf Scrapbots - Defeat 20 XS-013 Scrapbots within 12 seconds using XE-321 Boombots on Heroic Difficulty.
• Heroic: Nerf Gravity Bombs - Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor without any raid member dying from a Gravity Bomb on Heroic Difficulty.
• Heroic: Must Deconstruct Faster - Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor in 205 seconds on Heroic Difficulty.
• Heroic: Heartbreaker - Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor after destroying his heart on Heroic Difficulty.

Normal

• Nerf Engineering - Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor without him recovering any health from XS-013 Scrapbots on Normal Difficulty.
• Nerf Scrapbots - Defeat 20 XS-013 Scrapbots within 12 seconds using XE-321 Boombots on Normal Difficulty.
• Nerf Gravity Bombs - Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor without any raid member dying from a Gravity Bomb on Normal Difficulty.
• Must Deconstruct Faster - Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor in 205 seconds on Normal Difficulty.
• Heartbreaker - Defeat XT-002 Deconstructor after destroying his heart on Normal Difficulty.

The Encounter

One more tank and standard tank and spank fight... at least for most of the time.

Some facts:

• Spread out, to prevent AoE damage.
• After being hit by gravity bomb or a light bomb immediately spread out to minimize damage
• Healers look for tympanic tantrum. It deals 120% damage to all raid members over time (12 seconds)

It’s not a bad idea to assign healers to individual groups, as to ensure all players receive a heal.

At 75%/50%/25% (in other words: Every 6.250.000 Health Points) he will spawn adds with approximate 2.000.000 Health Points.

Tactic and Setup

One important thing is, to widely spread as there is much AoE damage.

It's also useful to have many group healers in your raid.At least 1 per group to get the group up when he casts tympanic tantrum.

Other than that, it's similar to the Reaver from The Eye. Simply move and don't stand to close to others when you get gravity bomb or light bomb.

Every 25% of his HP, adds will spawn. It's very important to kill this adds quickly, as they will heal him otherwise (XS-013 Scrapbots are the ones who heal him).

If you attack the heart during the add spawn, the damage did to him will be doubled. If you're not doing the Hard Mode (see below) DON'T KILL THE HEART!! As this will enable the Hard Mode and heal up the boss to max HP (in addition to 25% more max HP and 25% more damage). So get the Heart only down to 10-15% and go to on the adds.

XE-321 Boombots cause AoE damage when they explode. They do 50% of the HP if an target and can be used to blow up the other Bots.

XM-024 Pummelers have nothing special. It's best to kill them after boombots and scrapbots have been killed.

Hard Mode

To enable Hard Mode of this encounter, you have to click him while he' changing Phases (on 75/50/25%). This will open his heart which becomes attackable. Destroy it and beat him in this Hard Mode. While his heart is opened/attackable, he will deal significantly more damage and gain extra abilities (check list above!). Destroying his heart increases his health and damage by 25% as well as heals him up to his max. Health Points.

Notice: It doesn’t matter in which phase you activate the Hard Mode. You can do it at any of the 3 phases (75/50/25%). However, it’s better to do it on the first, as he will regenerate 100% once the Hard Mode is activated.

So activating it a 25% doesn’t benefit you at all. The opposite is the case, it’s more dangerous, because your healers and damage run low on Mana and the risk of a wipe is much higher!

Hard mode tactic

The tactic for this boss is quite easy. You’ll only need 1 tank and one off tank. The main tank will tank the boss and the off-tank can be a druid or Death Knight who will tank the Pummelers and the sparks.

The boss himself is tanked in the middle of the room. The group has to split into 2 lines pointing to the boss (which looks like the like the letter V on it’s head => /\)

On top of the “arrow” is the main tank, tanking the boss. The reason for this: In hard mode he has two additional abilities. The Gravity Bombs (the dark ones) will also create void zones and the Lightning Bombs (the light/white ones). They will do AoE damage to everyone around it and after a few seconds spawn a lighting spark which will walk around and do additional damage to the raid.

People who get the Gravity Bomb run to the right side of the arrow /\ (at least 15 yards away but still in heal range) to place the void zone out side of the raid and run back once they placed it.

People who get the Lighting Bomb walk to the middle of the /\ arrow and wait until the spark spawns. The off-tank takes the spark and tanks it while some of the ranged DDs (5-6 Ranged DDs should do it) nuke it down.

Repeat this until he’s down.