Ulduar Tanking: Ignis and Constructs

I have tanked Ignis's constructs in both normal and heroic difficulty and wanted to share what I think makes it a more successful endeavor.

1) Each construct tank should be assigned a healer whose job is mostly to keep him/her up. Make sure your healer is following you around. This is very important, as you may be zipping around to grab constructs or may find yourself running across the room to get them into scorch areas. Communicate with your healer to let them know how much you expect to be dashing around the room, so s/he knows what to expect.

2) Mark your construct as soon as you have good aggro on it. This makes it easier for people to find which one they should taunt off you. Use a mod for quick marking--I recommend TargetCharms. Also, make sure your pool taunters have target-of-target macros for you and any other offtank so they can grab your target quickly.

3) Make a macro that combines a /rw and a stun. Hit the button when your construct reaches 15 ticks of scorch. Your macro should stun it (preferably with shockwave due to its lower cooldown than concussion blow) and then you can back off so that it's easier for your pool people to taunt it off of you.

4) Count! I know this is hard for us warriors, since we only have 36 int and tend to communicate mostly in grunts anyway, but this is very important. Don't worry, you only need to know the numbers from 15-20. :D Count from 15 to 20 over Vent so your pool people know when to taunt it.

5) Position the scorches well. We have tried a couple different options and have finally found one that works. We tried double stacking them and then flipping the boss to double stack them 180 degrees away, but I don't recommend doing it that way because it makes for far too much knees-bent running around for the construct tanks. Instead, we made two Vs, one facing east and the other facing west. The Ignis tank stands in the north middle of the room and directs a scorch east, then moves him a bit to make the next one about 30 degrees away. Then the tank flips the boss and does the same thing mirror imaged. The effect is that the construct tanks don't have to run as far to get to the scorches.

6) Ancitipate where the scorches will happen. When you pick up a construct, try to drag it to the place with a fresh scorch, or if you want to get it into an old one, anticipate moving and keep the construct on the edge of the scorch closest to the other scorch spot. Try to avoid dragging a construct all the way across the room midway through its scorch ticks because they tick down if it's out of scorch. Try to stay on the same V the whole time. Also, if you grab a construct and the Ignis tank is just flipping over to your side of the room, you can stand there for just a couple seconds waiting for the first scorch to hit--this saves time over dragging it across the room.

7) Ancitipate which constructs come alive. They have a couple seconds where they're standing still in their starting spot but with red text over their heads. They are randomly selected and come to life after Ignis yells at them to arise.

8) Don't worry about whether you're standing in flames or not. The graphics make it very hard to see if you're getting hit with the flames or not. As long as you have a good healer on your heels, (no pun intended!) don't worry about the flames. It is far more important to get that construct in the flames ASAP and keep it there than it is to avoid taking some scorch damage yourself.

9) Lastly, I highly recommend people turn down their music and other sounds and focus on the audio clues given by this boss. They not only tell you when flame jets are happening (good for healers) but also when the constructs are going to pop. This helps you anticipate better.

10) Profit!

This is a brain dump of things I've found helpful in this boss encounter. I'll do more brain dumps of other bosses as time allows. Hopefully it will help people get into the rhythm of this boss because once you get used to that rhythm, it is a fight that any Naxx guild should be able to do.