Freya

Ensidieas hardmode strat, well worth a read.

Introduction
This is one of the most challenging hardmodes in Ulduar, only Mimiron will provide a harder fight. A few of the more annoying elements have been nurfed however, this removed some of the more RNG elements of the encounter but the concepts all still remain the same. The first thing to notice is that there are three Ancients in her room (big tree things!), each of this grants her additional buffs and abilities. The fight in this guide is based on leaving all 3 of these Ancients alive so when you first go into the room do not kill any of them because you cannot take it back. If at anypoint you feel you are stuggling too much kill Elder Stonebark, that will remove the ground Tremor and make the fight a lot easier. One part of the fight that needs to be cleared up is that Freya has a permanent HoT on her all the time and the power of this HoT is reduced by killing her adds, do not waste time damaging her until you have completed all 6 add phases.


Abilities
Freya:

Ground Tremor – This is a high damage AoE Physical damage spell that hits everyone in the raid once the cast is completed (2 sec cast). It does around 15k damage and interrupts spellcasting, silencing you on that school of magic.

Strengthened Iron Roots – Roots 3 players in place and deals damage to them for 6k every 2 seconds. You can kill these quite quickly, they have about 45k hp.

Eonar’s Gift – She casts a tree randomly in the fight area that slowly grows, once it’s fullsize it will heal Freya and all adds for a lot. You shouldnt allow them the heal, kill them fast! They have around 65k hp.

Sunbeam – Casts a beam of light on a target that does around 9k damage to anyone standing in that spot (1.5 sec cast). It also can leave a patch of light on the ground called Unstable Energy, this does 7k per tick of damage if you stand in it.

Nature Bomb – These are green bombs on the ground that spawn at the end of the fight, they do AoE damage for about 6.5k each (seems to vary quite a lot)

Conservator
Protector’s Grip – AoE silences the whole area, you need to stand near the mushrooms not to be silenced.

Pheromones – This is actually given by the mushroooms and buffs you with immunity to his silence and gives you 50% increased damage.

Nature’s Fury – This is the ability that makes this mob hard. Casted on a random target you do around 6.5k damage per second to yourself and those around you, you need to move quickly away from other raid members or remove it with cloak/ice block etc.

-Detonating Lashers-
Detonate – When the Lashers die they explode for around 9k damage.

Flame Lash – Melee attack, doesn’t hit very hard (4.5k on a Resto Shaman).

-Snaplasher-

Hardened Bark – Stacking debuff that adds 10% damage to the Snaplasher per damaging attack. If no attacks are made for 4 seconds then it resets (you do not want to get hit by this mob when he has more than 50)

-Storm Lasher-
Lightning Lash – Instant cast that works like Chain Lightning, this can hit for up to 15k and affects up to 3 targets.

Stormbolt – 2 second cast spammable bolt that hits for around 10k, this can and should be interrupted.

-Ancient Water Spirit-

Tidal Wave – 2 second cast charge that does AoE damage to anyone in the charge area. This can and should always be interrupted.


Preparation and Positioning
http://www.ensidia.com/media/upload/bossguides/freya1.jpg
Firstly as usual, BigWigs or another boss mod is highly recommended, they have a number of useful functions on this fight. The second thing you need to prepare are macros to target the various mobs and elements of the fight. These should include:
/tar Strengthened Iron Roots
/tar Eonar’s Gift
/tar Snaplasher
/tar Storm Lasher
/tar Ancient Water Spirit
The rest should be handled pretty easily, you should also have a focus macro (/focus) and always have Freya in focus (that goes for every player). You will also want to take a look at your stamina for this fight, although the fight has been nurfed a bit, stamina is still important. You can do this by using a Flask of Stoneblood for example, changing some gear or even changing some of your blue sockets to 24 stam.


-Raid Setup-
This fight can be done with either 2 or 3 tanks. There are many many different ways to do this fight, I doubt the one we use here is the best but it works for us. This guide will therefore be based on using 2 tanks and a Feral Druid dps’ing that tanks for a very short amount of time. If you wish to use 3 tanks for safety then the roles can be switched around to accommodate this as you will see later. It’s highly recommended that one of your tanks be a Death Knight and another be a Warrior, the reasons for this will be stated later on but ultimately the strategy works with any tank classes.
The best damage classes for this fight are Unholy DK’s by a considerable margin due to their ridiculous AoE damage capabilities. After that it’s Rogues, Shadow Priests and probably Warriors. Anything with good damage on multiple targets is going to be a strong class here. A good mix of ranged and Melee is nice, but if you take a bit more of one side it should probably be melee.

When it comes to healing, the first thing you want is a Discipline Priest. It is without doubt an essential raiding component here. With the absorbs it gives a lot of extra “virtual” hp to the raid and in addition you gain 3% reduced damage. After that Druids, Priests and Paladins are all fairly even if played well, Shamans are a little behind. A good setup is probably going to include 6 healers but if you are fine on dps and people are dying then you could add a 7th.

-Positioning and Assignments-
It’s best to pull the boss when she is standing stationary in the middle of a good bit of open ground (her natural idling spot where she returns to after patrolling is perfect). The raid should then be spread in a full circle around the tanking spot, this is where the buddy system comes into it. We use a system whereby there are 6 defined positions evenly spread around Freya. Each position has a healer and 1-2 ranged dps (melee will obviously be in melee). The idea of this is to not only have healers well spread but to allow the teams to pack up right on each other to avoid extra lightning lash chains. So before you go make sure that each healer has a position (we use a clock formation where each healer has 2,4,6,8,10,12 positions) and that they have 1-2 dps’er attached to that position. This is primarily for dealing with the phase that has the 3 named lasher adds however it’s good to have approximate positions for the entire fight. Paladin beacon and at least one healer should pay extra attention to the Freya tank.

You should also have assigned dps to each target during the 3 lasher add phase. This usually means your melee/hunters split over the spirit/storm lasher and the rest on the snaplasher but you should organise this according to your own guild/raid makeup. Be sure to adjust it and have people switch mob if some are going faster. Good communication between dps teams is vital at this point.

The Fight

Engage Freya when she is in a good spot and quickly move into position. The first thing to mention since it will be a constant theme throughout the fight is that you need to kill roots and the Eonar’s Gift as soon as they spawn. These 2 targets shoud always be placed in priority over whatever else you are doing. Obviously this does not mean running and switching target if others are in range but it’s something you should constantly be aware of and on top of.
The next thing you must be aware of is the Ground Tremor. Always have Freya in focus so that you can see her casting bar and know when Ground Tremor is incoming. If you are low hp and you think that the Ground Tremor might kill you then seeing the casting bar will help you react with a Healthstone or other cooldown to save yourself. The same goes for being conscious of the Sunbeam, you can see it being casted and be ready to move. This fight is all about awareness of the many things that will be going on around you and prioritising the right task.
So these are all the general concepts, now let’s look at the specific components of each add phase.

-Detonating Lashers-
Sometimes the easiest wave and sometimes the hardest. There are actually some better ways to approach this phase but we have always liked to do it this way because it gives you a good idiot check. When the Lashers spawn everyone packs up near the boss so that all of the mobs will come to the same spot. At this point you AoE taunt to pull them in and begin AoE’ing. AoE them to around 25-30% and then stop (some will probably be lower than this), at the same time everyone should immediately begin spreading out. Once you are spread off you will have plenty of time to single target down the now low hp Lashers. The problem occurs with them doing damage when they explode, especially in combination with the Ground Tremor/Sunbeam. It’s therefore important to only kill Lashers when there is not a Ground Tremor incoming soon (BigWigs) and try not to kill 2-3 in the same spot. You should also make sure that you prioritise killing Roots/Eonar’s Gift over Lashers. So I mean you can try putting them all low then snaring them and ranged AoE + taunts and tank cooldowns to take all the explosions. This however will not show you who is not paying attention in your raid. Kill them at the correct time and while using some common sense and this phase will not be a problem. Oh and Divine Sacrfice is best used on this phase!

-Snaplasher / Storm Lasher / Ancient Water Spirit-
For this phase you should make sure that your ranged are in the correct positions using the buddy system described before. Melee should stay away from Freya just before the spawn to avoid getting gibbed due to proxy aggro. We havn’t talked a lot about tanking up until this point and this is really the first point at which it comes into play. For the purposes of the guide the Freya tank will be a DK and your second tank will be a Warrior. When the 3 adds spawn your Feral Druid should be in Bear form to assist with the pickup. The way we do this is have the 2nd tank picking up the Ancient Water Spirit. The Bear then picks up the Storm Lasher and goes all out threat on it with the Warrior taunting it off after 15 seconds or so. This makes the pickup and initial threat better and also removes the need to carry a 3rd tank. This is totally possible to do with one tank but it’s slightly more risky and safety is always good when it only costs you a small amount. At this point the Druid can go back into cat and continue their normal dps. Meanwhile your DK that is tanking Freya will have picked up the Snaplasher. They should be able to go all out threat before the stacks go high and then you have a decision to make, you can either stop dps to reset the stacks or you can kite. We have always gone for the kiting option, this means that your DK just kites the Snaplasher spamming Chains of Ice on it. This means you can always maintain full dps, the only problem is if the tank gets rooted and then you must kill the roots immediately. Those damaging the other two elementals should be interrupting the Stormbolts and the Tidal Waves, they are very easy to control with good interrupting and stuns. Once you have evened out the hit points across all three of the mobs, you can just kill them.

-Ancient Conservator-
This is a very simple phase strategically but usually has the highest chance of random deaths. Your second tank (Warrior usually) picks up the Conservator and immediately gets him to the nearest mushroom. Remember you need to stand on the mushrooms to avoid the silence and do extra damage. This is the time to use dps cooldowns, you can either use bloodlust on the second one of these (recommended) or right at the end vs Freya alone. Burn down the conservator as fast as you can to limit the time of this phase. If you get Nature’s Fury, you need to run away from the raid, even if that means you get silenced. We call healing on ventrilo so we know that anyone that gets Fury has 1 healer to look after them, good communication between healers is paramount so that you know everyone is covered. Remembered that Nature’s Fury can be removed with Cloak of Shadows, Ice Block, Divine Shield etc. so you may want to use cooldowns to mitigate it. As a final reminder, you MUST prioritise Roots/Eonar’s Gift in this phase just as the others.

-Freya-
Once you complete all 6 waves (2 of each) you will fight Freya alone now. She has only one new ability and that’s the Nature Bombs. The best way to counter this is to have 2 camps, melee and ranged. Start on one side of the area (say down by the river) and then once the bombs fire you all move away (up the hill) to avoid the bombs. Once she casts again you then simply move back to the river, this makes the bombs have almost no effect on your raid. The only time they will be annoying is when people get rooted in them, be sure to use defensive cooldowns such as Guardian Spirit if you can’t kill the roots in time. Be sure to always stay ontop of the Eonar’s Gift and Roots and you should beat his final part easily. If you allow an Eonar to heal her you may well wipe so be extra aware of them perhaps being slightly hidden. Nothing complex here at the end at all really, just burn her down and collect your well deserved loot.

This video has the full vent conversation on, and in particular shows a reallly good way of dealign with the detonating lashers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feC3wVw9TFc