A Walk in the Park
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The Freya encounter in Ulduar is the first of four encounters with the "Keepers"; these bosses are all required in order to move on to further encounters in Ulduar, and present an array of challenges for any raid. TDC chose to attempt Freya first of the Keepers, and we proved up to the challenge.
The trash before Freya is a challenge in and of itself. It's fairly numerous and tightly packed, and requires good CC in order to minimize raid damage. In addition to the trash, there are three mini-bosses in Freya's area, which can be skipped if the raid wants to attempt Freya in hard-mode; we decided to clear each of these mini-bosses in advance of attempting Freya (and get the benefit of the Emblems dropped by each one!). Once the trash and mini-bosses were cleared, it was on to Freya.
The fight consists of two phases. In P1, Freya is immune to damage until the six waves of adds she spawns are defeated. These six waves consist of three different types of add groups: small and numerous detonating lashers which must be AoE'd to low health then single targetted to minimize splash damage from their explosions, a single Conservator add that requires raid personnel be near spawned mushrooms in order to be able to perform any actions, and a troika of mobs (snaplasher, storm lasher, and ancient water spirit), all with different abilities and health, which must die within twelve seconds of each other or they respawn. In addition to these waves, Freya spawns trees called Eonar's Gifts that must be dps'd down within a small period of time or they will grant 60% health to all mobs currently alive (which is typically a precursor to a wipe). These waves require tight coordination, and are the primary challenge of the encounter. Once all six waves are down, Freya moves to P2, which is essentially a tank and spank, with the slight added complexity of moving away from spawned Nature Bombs which cause significant splash damage to the raid which can be easily avoided by raiders with situational awareness. Once TDC mastered P1, Freya was quickly moved to the "kill" column!
This is a very fun fight that ensures a raid is on its toes; good communication, situational awareness, and teamwork resulted in another boss down for TDC. Great work folks!