I want to start discussion about tactics pertaining to the medium and hard modes of the Assembly of Iron fight.

We got our first look at Medium-Mode phase 3 last week and it was pretty obvious we're going to have to tighten some things up when dealing with the summoning rune.

I'm not certain that having everyone stack is the best way to go. I think it would be easier if everyone (except melee) spread out. The rune spawns every 20 seconds, and it spawns on a player. If ranged is spread out it's easy to see where it is, at which point all ranged can turn around and immediately start AoE on the rune (Don't even wait for adds to spawn, have the AoE waiting for them)

Melee would have the luxury of sticking to the boss. If the rune spawns on the melee then whoever is Tanking Molgeim (along with all the melee) will have to hustle to get away while ranged opens up with AoE.

The reason we're starting to work on this achievement is because without it, we won't have access to Algalon. Time permitting, of course, we want to try this every week (at least a couple of times) while we progress deeper into Ulduar.

Please let me know what you think. Also, refrain from posting pre-made strategies at this time.

I love trying hard modes, but I really think we should try to push toward Yogg for now. Mimiron is gonna take some learning, and so will Yogg for sure, and a lot of bosses are still not on farm mode either.
Since we only got 3 raiding days, we always fall short on getting some attemps on the later part of Ulduar.
I actually think at some point we should forget side bosses and go straight for mimiron, then Yogg, because i really dont think we're lacking gear to get any fight down. We just need the time to practice.
We can farm the early bosses for months still... just my 2 cents...

But regarding Tiger's strat, I think it's a great idea, because it will allow a lot of aoe dmg to be on top of it right away, instead of having to run, then turn, then cast... and if the melee gets targeted, all the ranged aoers can just burn the adds.
We just need someone to be calling out the runes, especially if it gets under the melee and tank, cause that can lead to a wipe quick.

I agree that spreading out, not stacking is the road we'll have to go down for this one.

With the spawn frequency of the rune it unfortunately makes stacking impractical.

I have to agree with Wangari. Yes, we can't fight Algalon til we have this, but we also won't get to Algalon until we've got Freya, Hodir, Mimiron and Thorim hard modes as well... and we barely have their normal modes down. Algalon is very far down the road for us.

Instead of spending an extra hour wiping on hard modes for fights we really can't consider on 'farm' yet, I'd prefer we push forward on normal mode fights and get better at them, or else we'll never have time to get all the way to Yogg in one lockout period.

But if we have to continue to pluck away at this, I think the spreading out is worth a try. Then we don't have to move everyone, just the person (or possibly people) closest to the spawn. And I think it's very important that we get the AoE down before the adds actually spawn.

I'd have to agree with Wang. Farming bosses we can kill and spending time on bosses we haven't killed far out weights spending time doing "i choose you" or this bosses hard mode.

I slao have to agree with Wang,
But not skip the side bosses.
If we just go go burn on the first day like we do, we open up to 3 optional bosses, then the 4 Keepers.
As far as I recall we have not even seen Mimiron on 25, and on 10 he was a short lived wipefest.

I think we need to push for progression, as well as killing what we have on farm to bring more gear to mkae the hard modes easier,
I'm guessing if there is an Achie to kill Algalon with all item levels under 226, it's going to take more gear then what we have to do hard modes, but with our current gear I'm sure we could clear to 'Ol Yoggy with out too much hassle.

So to sum it up; More boss kills weekly= more loot, more loot = easier hard modes which in turn leads to Algalon.
We kind of have to bult a sturdy foundation before we build the roof >.>

There is my two cents.

There's a knife's edge balance to be struck.

Practicing harder variations of fights will hopefully make you play better.

Unless you're a frozen brain dead monkey. (You're not, are you? I've seen a few in Naxx. It was on YouTube, so it must be true.)

But gear is good too. Throwing in the odd attempt here or there when time permits won't slow us down prohibitively.

I think the AoI is worth working on, the problem is its a longer engagement and we won't know if we are going to fail until the very end essentially. I don't necessarily think its worth the investment of our time to give up tier pieces for right now but giving one attempt (just to see it) and then killing them quickly isn't a bad idea. Ideally I think we can plow through XT after FL and start working on watchers, and then double back for Razor and Ignis when we see we only have 30-60 mins left on a particular night. We will still down them every week. It would be nice to start the quest chain before we down any hard modes, but that assumes we would not be able to do it every time and would be relying on luck. I would rather see us working on Mimiron than AoI hard modes, not to mention Thorim. T8 gear and set bonuses are really good for a lot of classes and will help us get through this stuff faster. There are other hard modes like Hodir and Thorim that we would be able to try, rinse, repeat; more quickly. Ok, Thorim's hard mode drops my new shield so I'm a little partial to him . The gear issue isn't a question of pride, we do actually need the performance enhancement. I'm sure there are guilds that have done without it, but I think we need it.

Flame Leviathan; I really don't think there is any reason to not leave up a tower. That extra badge means a lot to us right now and it doesn't require a lot of additional effort. We're just cheating ourselves. We know the fight and adding one additional element won't break us, there will still be plenty of latitude.

I agree with Barlo on FL. We know we can do 1 tower, and without too much effort I think we should be able to get that in 1 or 2 tried each week now. We've got Unbroken, we've got that other one, but neither of those reward us anything extra. An extra badge would be very tasty

i agree with a lot of people here that i do not want to work on hard mode aoi yet.

i would honestly rather be clearing the instance then start working on hard modes. However, i also agree with ottar in that FL is easy. we should be starting to do his hard mode for badges and eventually the gear.