Freya Strategy Guide – Ulduar (10)

Ulduar Freya Raid Guide Featured Image
  • Author: Passion
  • Date: January 6, 2023
  • Updated: January 7, 2023
  • Expansion: WotLK Classic

Freya was the protector of life on Azeroth, slowly corrupted by the influence of Yogg-Saron. Despite her corruption, she still resides in her verdant conservatory, surrounded by greenery and life.

This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to deal with Freya’s three Elder protectors, her armies of flora, and eventually the guardian of life herself.

Role Summaries

  • Don’t bother DPSing Freya while she still has most of her stacks of attuned-to-nature, it’ll just be healed
  • Stand under Eonar’s Gift and Healthy Spores when fighting Conservators
  • Move away from the group if hit by natures-fury
  • Avoid standing near dying Detonating Lashers
  • Move out of the way for Natures Bomb
  • Make sure to kill Iron Roots
  • Be sure you aren’t casting when ground-tremor goes out to avoid being interrupted
  • Call out for casters to stop casting during ground-tremor
  • Call positions of Eonar’s Gift and Healthy Spores
  • Call for DPS to kill Iron Roots
  • Make sure players stop DPSing Snaplashers with too many stacks

Abilities

Freya

Freya deals moderate Nature damage to her target and all enemies within 8 yards of them. Simply don’t stand near the tank and you’ll be fine.

Freya begins the fight with 150 stacks of this, each stack increasing her healing received by 8%. Killing adds during Phase 1 will remove stacks; after 6 waves of adds, all stacks will be gone.

Freya will be healed every second for the fight, scaling with attuned-to-nature. This effectively makes it useless to DPS her during Phase 1, as she will most likely outheal all damage your raid can deal.

Freya summons eonars-gift, which casts lifebinders-gift after a short delay. This spell will heal Freya and all adds for a large percentage of their health. Standing near Eonar’s Gift will also grant the player pheromones, negating conservators-grip from ancient-conservators during Phase 1.

During Phase 2 Freya will summon Nature Bombs on top of raid members. These will cast nature-bomb after a delay, dealing moderate Nature damage to everyone within 10 yards of them and knocking them back. Players should try to avoid being hit by this to minimize the repositioning needed.

During Phase 1 Freya will cast this once per minute to summon a wave of adds. After 6 waves have been summoned and killed she will have no more stacks of attuned-to-nature and Phase 2 will begin.

elder-brightleaf

Every 5 seconds Brightleaf will gain a random number of stacks of brightleaf-flux, increasing his damage and healing for each stack. Stacks of this also impact his other spells, such as solar-flare.

Periodically a beam of light will spawn around Brightleaf. Standing in one of these will buff the player with a stacking buff increasing their damage and healing. DPS should try their best to be in these as much as possible.

Brightleaf deals heavy Nature damage to his target and removes all stacks of unstable-sun-beam from them.

While standing inside a Sunbeam, Brightleaf will constantly heal every second.

Brightleaf fires a solar-flare at multiple targets, dealing moderate Fire damage to all of them. The amount of targets is based on how many stacks of brightleaf-flux he currently has.

elder-ironbranch

Ironbranch deals massive Physical damage every second for 5 seconds to his target, stunning them. Your tank will need to use defensives to survive this.

Ironbranch deals heavy Nature damage to all enemies within 6 yards of his target.

Ironbranch summons iron-roots, rooting a player and dealing moderate Nature damage every 2 seconds. The target can be freed by killing the roots.

This ability is given to Freya if Ironbranch is killed before the fight.

elder-stonebark

Elder Stonebark gains a massive damage boost but his movement is slowed. Each attack also has a chance to cause broken-bones, reducing their avoidance to zero.

The first 120 melee attacks done to Stonebark are reflected back to the attacker.

Stonebark channels for 2 seconds and then deals heavy Physical damage to the raid, interrupting casts for 8 seconds. All casters need to make sure they aren’t casting when this lands!

This ability is given to Freya if Stonebark is killed before the fight.

Raid Composition & Preparation

This fight has no specific class or spec requirements, and as long as your group can out-heal the damage you should be able to pull through.

You will want 1-3 Healers for this fight, with no particular type of healer being more valuable than others.

There are no strict requirements for DPS classes or specs here, you simply want a combination of good raid buffs and debuffs, as well as the best players you can muster.

You will want to bring 1-2 tanks for this fight, making sure you can effectively handle Freya and the adds during Phase 1.

Hard Mode

Freya’s hard mode functions very similarly to Sartharion. There are three Elders found in her room, and killing these before engaging Freya will make the fight significantly easier. Each Elder left alive will provide her with a unique buff for the fight, but will not actually join in for the fight.

If Elder Brightleaf is left alive, Freya will gain brightleafs-essence, increasing the magic damage of all enemies during the fight, as well as giving Freya the ability to cast unstable-energy. This spell causes three beams of light to spawn that will deal damage to players under them every second. Make sure to move out of this!

If Elder Stonebark is alive, Freya will gain stonebarks-essence, buffing her Physical damage, as well as the ability ground-tremor. This ability is a 2-second cast that deals moderate Physical damage to everyone in the raid as well as interrupting their casts. Make sure every caster stops casting whenever this is going out!

If Elder Ironbranch is alive, Freya will gain ironbranchs-essence, buffing the physical damage of all of the adds that spawn, as well as the ability strengthened-iron-roots, which summons roots that cast iron-roots on players, dealing moderate Nature damage every 2 seconds and rooting them until the root is killed.

Defeating Freya on hard mode adds the following additional loot to her drop table

The Pull

Before engaging Freya you will want to have cleared as much trash as possible from the room, as well as killed your choice of Elders. Other than that, you should not need to think about anything special.

The Fight

Phase 1

Phase 1 of this fight is often referred to as the add phase. Freya will buff herself with 150 stacks of attuned-to-nature alongside touch-of-eonar. These two together effectively make it pointless to DPS her during this part of the fight.

A wave of enemies will spawn each minute, and killing these will remove varying amounts of attuned-to-nature stacks. These waves come in three different types, and each different wave type will spawn twice during the add phase.

The first wave type is detonating-lashers. These spawn in groups of 12 around Freya and have a decent chunk of health. These cannot be taunted or otherwise tanked, and will create chaos while alive. When one dies it will detonate for moderate damage to everyone within 15 yards of it. This damage isn’t enough to kill a player in one hit, but AoEing and killing multiple on top of the same players will very quickly blow them up. Each Detonating Lasher killed reduces attuned-to-nature by 2 stacks.

10 freya detonating lashers

The second wave type is the ancient-conservator. This is a very high-health enemy that can be tanked. These also occasionally cast conservators-grip, pacifying and silencing everyone in the raid. To mitigate this players can stand under the healthy-spores that spawn around the encounter while this add is alive. Additionally, these will cast natures-fury on a random player, causing them to deal Nature damage to all allies around them. Anyone debuffed by this will need to move away from the raid to minimize unnecessary damage. Killing one of these will reduce attuned-to-nature by 30 stacks.

10 freya conservator

The final wave type is the trio of snaplasher, ancient-water-spirit, and storm-lasher. These are all tankable and stunnable, but must die at the same time otherwise, they will revive each other. The Ancient Water Spirit will cast tidal-wave in a cone in front of them. The Storm Lasher will stay at a distance and cast stormbolt and lightning-lash. Finally the Snaplasher has a debuff called hardened-bark. Each time you attack the Snaplasher it will build another stack of hardened-bark, up to 99 stacks. Each stack increases its damage dealt, and slows its movement, easily stacking to numbers that will one-shot your tanks. At 20 stacks, Snaplashers will be immobilized and can be left to the ranged DPS. Killing any of these will reduce attuned-to-nature by 10 stacks each.

10 freya trio

Phase 2

After all 6 waves of adds are dealt with, Phase 2 will begin. The boss mechanics do not change much here, but without attuned-to-nature, you can actually deal relevant damage to Freya! Freya will occasionally cast nature-bomb, summoning a nature-bomb at the foot of a random raid member. After a few seconds, the bomb will explode, dealing moderate Nature damage to everyone within 10 yards and knocking them back.

Here are some of the main things that can typically go wrong in this fight:

  • Adds are not handled effectively, allowing the raid to be overwhelmed
  • Players don’t move out with natures-fury
  • Iron Roots are ignored
  • Detonating Lashers are AoEd down all at once, blowing up the raid
  • Healers get interrupted by ground-tremor, removing their ability to heal for 8 seconds

Achievements

  • con-speed-atory-10
    • Kill Freya within 20 minutes of killing your first trash mob inside the Conservatory of Life. Because the Freya fight is likely to take at least 6 minutes, you have very limited time to clear trash in here, as well as extremely limited time to kill any Elders you want.
  • deforestation-10
    • Kill 2 Ancient Water Spirits, 2 Storm Lashers, and 2 Snaplashers within 10 seconds of the first dying. This effectively requires your group to AoE them all down at once.
  • getting-back-to-nature-10
    • Beat Freya while she still has at least 25 stacks of attuned-to-nature. This requires you to leave a few adds alive towards the end of Phase 1 and to DPS through her increased healing.
  • lumberjacked-10
    • Defeat Elder Brightleaf, Elder Ironbranch, and Elder Stonebark within 15 seconds of each other. This guarantees that you will not get any of the next 3 achievements. To do this you will need to either stack the Elders together and fight them all at once, or split into three separate groups and fight them at the same time, similar to Fuegen and Stalagg in Naxxramas.
  • knock-on-wood-10
    • Beat Freya with 1 Elder alive. This is the “slightly harder than normal” mode for this fight.
  • knock-knock-on-wood-10
    • Beat Freya with 2 Elders alive. This is a semi-hard mode version, and finishing this will also give you the previous achievement.
  • knock-knock-knock-on-wood-10
    • Beat Freya with 3 Elders alive. This is the achievement for full hard mode, beating her in her hardest state. Finishing this will also unlock the previous two achievements.

Congratulations on defeating Freya! Time to leave the forest and go back to Ulduar.

 

About the Author

Passion

I love MMOs of all shades, especially the nitty gritty numbers parts of them. You might recognize me from the Shadow Priest discord, otherwise I play a little bit of everything, especially games with support roles available.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Scroll to Top