ICC: Week One

As you may have learned from my previous post, my guild has nearly cleared the first wing of Icecrown Citadel 10 man. Our 25 man did manage to drop Lord Marrowgar this past Thursday, but struggled on Lady Deathbringer. Not enough people were clear on their roles, which is a sure fire ingredient for fail when dealing with the amount of adds in the 25 man encounter.

Anyway, I figured I’d offer up a brief recap of the 10 man versions, along with a few tips from a Hunter’s perspective. We’ve completed 3/4 of the encounters and have gotten pretty close to dropping Deathbringer. That’s a difficult fight, but I feel we’ve got a good shot at getting him before the raid reset. We shall see.

Lord Marrowgar

As a Hunter, this fight isn’t all that tough as long as you pay attention to these things:

• Get out of the path of Coldflame – Lord Marrowgar sends out a Coldflame which travels towards a random person in the raid. It can be easily avoided if you’re paying attention, as it moves moves fairly slow. 18K frost damage over 3 seconds if it gets you, so be mindful.
• Call out and DPS down the Bone Spikes – Marrowgar will hurl a spike at a random player, which will then cause all players between the intended target and Marrowgar to be stuck in the Bone Spike Graveyard. These Bone Spikes must be dealt with immediately. Getting the Bone Spikes down ASAP is the most important part of this encounter. The Bone Spike itself causes an instant 9K damage when the player is impaled, followed by additional damage equal to 10% of the player’s remaining health for 10 seconds. What makes the Bone Spikes especially dangerous is the fact that the affected player is unable to move, which makes them a sitting duck for Cold Flame. He’ll emote just before tossing down the Bone Spikes, so be looking for them. Ideally, the range should be spread out to one side of him so that anyone impaled can be reached easily. If people start running around all fancy crazy trying to avoid Coldflame and then get impaled on a Bone Spike a good distance from the DPS & heals, then it causes problems.
  • It’s not too hard for us Hunters to see the spikes as they appear, but if you find you’re not getting to them quick enough, spamming tab target or creating a /target Bone Spike macro could come in handy. It’s also important to let your raid know if you’re impaled. If you’re not on vent, then a macro letting the group know: >>> [YOURNAME] IS GETTING BONED <<<, can be clutch. 😉
• Avoid Bone Storm – Throughout the fight Marrowgar will go into a 20 second Whirlwind type attack, then charge random players. After attacking them for a few seconds, he’ll go after another player, damaging everything in his path. Bone Storm by itself isn’t lethal (only does 6K over 2 seconds), but if you happen to get hit by a Coldflame followed by Bone Storm, then you may have issues. If you do happen to get caught in a Bone Storm, then Deterrence will help out here.
• Apply Misdirection following Bone Storm – Bone Storm resets Marrowgar’s aggro table, so it’s imperative that the tanks pick up threat once it’s over. If not, he’s likely to target a healer or DPS and send them to the GY. Stop DPS before the timer runs out and then cast a Misdirection and resume DeePS.
• Rinse and repeat ’til he’s dead.
• Celebrate and distribute loots.

Lady Deathwhisper

The key here is making it to the second phase. The second phase is pretty much a DPS race. If you can make it past the first phase, it’s relatively smooth sailing the rest of the way provided you have the firepower.

In the first phase, Lady Deathwhisper is protected by a mana barrier. The mana barrier is depleted by its absorption of damaging attacks. In this phase, you only need to be worried about her mana bar, not her health bar. She cannot take damage during phase one, so her health bar will stay at full.

She cannot be tanked during this phase and has no threat table. During this time she will attack the raid at random, throwing out Shadow Bolts and Death & Decay. The Death & Decay can easily be avoided by just stepping outside of it, and a Pally’s Shadow Resist Aura will help mitigate some damage from the bolts.

While trying to burn down her mana barrier, you’re also going to be dealing with adds that spawn from either the left or right sides of the room. In 10 man the adds spawn in packs of threes, consisting of 1-2 Cult Adherents and 1-2 Cult Fanatics. Adherents are the first kill target(s), as they do decent damage and apply a nasty casting speed debuff. It’s important to note that Adherents are immune to spell damage, and Fanatics are immune to physical damage.

I mainly focused on the Adherents, leaving the Fanatics to the caster DPS and Death Knights. Once the Adherents were down I’d switch back to uninterrupted DPS on the shield.

At random points the fallen Adherents and Fanatics will res and become more powerful. Get these down as quickly as possible.

Once the mana shield gets depleted then the tank must pick her up as quickly as possible. Be ready with a Misdirection here. This then begins Phase 2.

During Phase 2, the Hunter’s primary job is to just administer massive quantities of ranged damage. Honestly, I know there was some other crap going on in the background, but I was so preoccupied trying to beat the enrage timer, I kinda missed it. 😉 We were like 2-4 seconds away from a wipe. It was quite the rush, let me tell ya.

You could say I earned the bow she left for me, that’s for sure.

Gunship Battle

This is one of the most enjoyable fights ever. Seriously.

I’m not a huge fan of fights involving vehicles or manned tools of warfare, therefore I had low expectations going into this. However, I have to tell you… this is perhaps one of the most unique and exciting battles I’ve ever been a part of.

The first thing you want to do is grab a jet pack from the Goblin NPC on the main deck of the Skybreaker. These are utilized to board the other ship once the battle’s underway. You may or may not have to utilize it, but everyone in the raid should have one anyway, just in case.

Once the the battle’s initiated, it starts to take on a “Piratey” feel. The vessel sets sail and then eventually becomes under siege by the opposing faction’s airship. This is when the fun begins. 🙂

Once the ships engage one another, it then becomes a race to burn down the enemy ship before they shoot you down. I was only one of two ranged DPS in our raid, so my job was to stand at the edge of the ship and DPS down the Troll axe throwers on the other ship. The Horde version deals with Alliance rifleman I believe.

While this is going on, two other players will be in charge of manning the cannons used to damage the other ship. I was actually on these the first couple of attempts and it was good fun. 😉

The cannons have two primary attacks – one that’s spammable and builds up “heat”, and another that releases the heat in the form of damage. The intent here is to build up as much heat as possible without reaching 100%. The cannons have a power bar, similar to a warrior’s rage bar, that shows the amount of heat generated. The trick is to release it at about 90-95%. If you get to 100%, then the guns will render useless for several seconds while they cool down. The cannoneers should be attacking the ranged adds, and in turn doing collateral damage to the opposing gunship.

Throughout the fight, the opposing captain will call for a battle mage to come out and freeze the cannons. Since the cannons are the only way to damage the opposing ship, it’s priority one to unfreeze them. The only way to do this is by dropping the battle mage. This is where the jet packs come in. 😉

When the cannons are frozen, a tank healer and 2-3 DPS need to book it over to the other ship. The tank needs to pick up threat on the captain or else he’ll start nuking the DPS as they try to burn down the battle mage. One the battle mage is down, it’s time to return to the ship and continue dealing with the attacking adds and manning the cannons.

Apart from the axe throwers and adds that attack on the ship, the other thing to look out for are incoming rockets. They show as circles on the ground and can be pretty easily avoided if you’re paying attention.

If you manage to stay alive long enough to down the opposing ship, it will eventually fall from the sky and a chest with loots will be available on your gunship.

Once again, celebrate and distribute goodies. 😀

The fight seems pretty chaotic at first, but after a couple tries it’s not too difficult to grasp. Like I said, this is one of the most enjoyable and memorable raid encounters ever… period. I can’t wait to do it again next week. 😀

Deathbringer Saurfang

He’s a pain in the ass. I’ll talk about this one hopefully before Tuesday. I have an idea how the fight needs to go, but I’ll wait to defeat him before I discuss it.