With the new year coming around, it seems like a great time to start putting my life in to perspective. I’ve enjoyed the 4 years I’ve been playing WoW, but most recently it’s become entirely too time consuming and demanding of my time. This isn’t a “QQ WoW ruined my life” post, it’s more of an “it was fun while it lasted” post.

In 2010, I’ll be working on starting my tattoo apprenticeship and focusing a lot more on my career and family as opposed to gaming. Looking over the last few years, I’ve really had no goals. I live life day by day, not worrying about the future, but that’s something I definitely want to change. Focusing more on a career doesn’t leave me a lot of time to do what I loved doing in WoW – raiding.

I could always log in and play casually, but I don’t really get any satisfaction out of that. Raiding was really the only part of the game I looked forward to, but raiding is time consuming and that much time is just something I won’t have. It’ll definitely just be a lot more manageable to toss in a 360 game, play a little bit and not have to worry about comitting to certain play times, falling behind in gear, missing daily resets, etc., and still be able to just pause or stop for a few days to focus on my family.

So this is goodbye from a WoW perspective, but sometimes you gotta know when to fold ‘em. Thanks again for all of the fun over the years.

As a guild/raid leader, nothing frustrates me more than cancelling raids, but the officers and myself are a bit more understanding around the holidays. This weekend we were forced to cancel both of our ICC-25 raids, and where normally I’d flip out, start docking DKP, etc., we sucked it up, told everyone why the raids were being cancelled, asked them to be understanding and as a “thank you” to the players who stuck it out, we gave them full hourly DKP for the entire raid.

It’s winter. People get sick, the weather can be brutal in certain parts of the world and knock out internet connections, there are various religious holidays that can get in the way of gaming and some people still live at home. Those people get drug around to their family outings, missing raids as well. Some people work in retail and we all know this is the busiest season of the year. Those people get temporary schedule changes that force them to work later than normal.

We’re getting hit with all of the above.

I know there are some people that will think “Wow, I joined this guild to raid and the raids are getting cancelled!” and maybe shop around for other guilds, but I’m hoping that a majority of our core raiders understand that winter is a horrible raiding season near the holidays.

On Saturday, our “night 1″ in ICC-25, we had a few people that couldn’t make the raid, 1 or 2 people no-show and 2 people that live together that had internet troubles so bad they would disconnecter after roughly 2 or 3 minutes of gameplay. Rather than cancel the raid right away, we took a raid vote to see if people wanted to (1) call it, (2) farm the trash for rep to upgrade our rings, or (3) PuG the remaining spots and run ToC-25.

We had a few votes to just call it, but enough people wanted to farm rep or do ToC-25 so we decided to just farm trash for Ashen Verdict rep. After 1 clear, I did a raid vote asking who wanted to continue and only 6 or 7 people wanted to keep going. We did another raid vote, asking that anyone wanting to do ToC-25 to stay in the raid group and the ones who aren’t interested are free to leave. There were 6 people left in the raid group afterwards, so we just called it.

Our 2 10-man teams are both 4/4 in ICC-10 and people seem to have a lot of fun in the 10’s, but when it comes to 25’s (even back in the ToC era) it’s a clusterfunk. A majority of our no-shows are on the 25-man nights and the officers and I are pretty fed up with it. We put more time in to the game than our raiders do to make the guild function and don’t want to continue putting the extra work in to it if it goes unappreciated.

We made an announcement over vent before everyone logged out, asking everyone to be patient until the holidays were over and if things didn’t get better at that point, our attendance policy would become a bit more strict, especially for new recruits. Right now we require 3/4 nights raid attendance for “raiders” but when people apply and join, they’re going to be required to make all 4 raid nights for 2 straight weeks.

At that point, they’d become a raider.

If anyone drops below 3/4 nights consistently, they’ll be demoted to “member” which has a lower loot priority, a lower chance to be given a raid spot in our 10’s and no longer has the ability to repair their gear from the guild bank or get free enchants. If a recruit does this, they’ll just be removed from the guild completely and asked to reapply when they can commit to the raid schedule.

We have a lot of people “wanting” to raid and “wanting” to clear content, but we also have people who just want to raid whenever they want and not put in as much work as the rest. Those are not the people I want in my guild and those are the people who are holding us back from progressing in ICC-25.  They are the reason we’re making our attendance policy a bit more strict. We’ve got enough dedicated people to make 2 10-man teams but not enough to make a solid 25-man team.

Recruiting has been a bit better so far. We’re definitely getting a higher caliber of player apply because not every guild is 4/4 in ICC, but I fear that we’ll bring those people in to the guild and they’ll see how inconsistent our ICC-25 groups are because of those people mentioned above. I’d like to get rid of those people altogether, but I can’t bring myself to just kick them.

Some of them even have legitimate reasons why they can’t make every raid, but to me it’s like.. you read the application, you said it worked out, but now that you’re in the guild you think your personal life should allow you to make your own schedule? For instance, we have a great Rogue but he’s also a military pilot who is on call all the time. As he puts it “those helicopters aren’t going to fly themselves”, and I totally understand that.

Do you make 24 other people suffer by continuing to allow these people to raid whenever they want because of their personal life or do you take the chance of looking like a prick by recruiting someone else to take their spot that CAN make every raid and definitely help the guild progress faster? It’s the same situation if someone has children and can’t make every raid because of their real-life commitment. As a guild leader and a raid leader, is it okay to hold 24 other people back because you want to be “human” and let these people raid whenever they want? Is the guild environment that YOU want suitable for these people?

I bascially want to run an end-game raiding guild full of raiders who want to be there and I can rely on. I don’t want people who say they can make the times but a few weeks later they admit that their real life is getting in the way and they can only raid once or twice a week. We want people to become part of our “team”, not a substitute teacher, you know?

I’m just trying to figure out where I need to draw the line between being the leader of a successful raiding guild and being an asshole.

Any input here?

More non-QQ in-game postings under the cut.

On a non-QQraidleader note, my Xmas gift from my grandmother (who still sends me Xmas money at 28 years old) was used to race change my Priest and Warlock. I’ve been playing them a lot lately thanks to the new LFD system and I’m pretty sick of looking at Undead characters (the main race I’ve played in my WoW tenure). I’ve been slapping myself in the face since I’ve started raiding that I made my Warlock Undead instead of an Orc, especially since I raided as Demonology.

“I picked an anti-fear racial over a push-to-use spellpower trinket racial and +5% pet damage? WHAT WAS I THINKING!”

That’s been going through my head all along, and I finally got the extra cash to make it happen. Abigore the female Undead Warlock is now Nevariah, the female Orc Warlock and Schoolgirl the male Undead Priest is now Aerseth, the male Blood Elf Priest. I’ll post before and after screenshots sometime this week, but so far I’m definitely happy with the changes.

The Command racial is definitely noticeable looking at Haathun’s damage in recount and is even helping with my Felhoung’s damage in my Affliction off-spec. I macro’ed the Blood Fury racial in to my Meta/DemonicEmpowerment/Shadowbolt button and it’s just icing on the cake.

I didn’t switch my Priest for racial reasons, I just don’t care for the Undead casting animations and I really can’t stand the way gear looks on them with their spines sticking out of the back of every cloak, their sleeves torn around their elbows, etc. Now I can be a pretty boy Shadow Priest with a shadowy foxtail haircut and a full set of untattered armor. I also really like the male Belf casting animations >.>. Yeah, I’m shallow.

Blizzard has also been taunting me lately. If I DPS on my DK, tanking stuff drops and the tank actually needs it. When I run stuff on my casters, the 2H DK weapons drop. I’ve also lost the Nevermelting Icecrystal from heroic PoS twice to healers. I really with Blizzard would have made that trinket only effect harmful spells because there is already a caster trinket that is itemized for healers only. Blegh.

/end rant.

Congrats to Sideshow and Syrana who celebrated their 1-year bloggiversary today!

*does a Moonkin sexy dance for them*

As a blogger, I can tell you that it’s difficult to keep a blog interesting and fresh for a few months, let alone an entire year! A lot of blogs also come and go for any multitude of reasons (I, myself, get firewalled at work often and have to change my URL every few months.. grrr), but S&S do an amazing job not only keeping their blog interesting but giving back to the blogging community with contests, charities, etc.

Needless to say, I’m definitely proud to be in the same blogosphere as S&S and hopefully they’ll be making a 2 year bloggiversary post in the future ^_^.

I’m also flattered to be a part of their blogging scavanger hunt at question #24.

“How many blogs has Abigore (aka Abi) ran this year as he attempts to outwit the firewall boss and what are/were they called?”

I can tell you that’s a trick question as well, but I won’t spoil the answer for anyone. Hell, even *I* was stumped on this one at first. I can’t keep track of my own blogs! I think I’m going to give up on giving each new URL a different name and just give them a number.. like “Fear.Win #2” or “Kungaloosh 3: In 3D!”.. maybe “Shadow Word: Blog 4: The Return!”.

I assure you all that I’m not schizophrenic!

Deathbringer Saurfang is the 4th and final encounter in the Lower Spire of the Icecrown Citadel raid instance. This encounter is definitely the most difficult to learn and has very little room for error, so it may take many attempts to fine tune your strategy.

I just noticed I didn't color his arm.. oh well. You can't polish a turd, right?

This fight revolves around controlling Saurfang’s Blood Power, his resource that is used to apply a horrible permanent debuff to a random raid member. Every time one of his special abilities or his summoned Blood Beasts deal damage, he gains 1 blood power.

Saurfang brings the pain in bulk with..

• Blood Boil – Targets a random raid member and deals damage to them over time. Each tick will generate 1 blood power to Saurfang.
• Blood Nova – Targets a random raid member and damages anyone within 10 yards of them for damage. Each person effected gives Saurfang 1 blood power. This only targets ranged and healers. Having them all spread out more than 10 yards will avoid anyone taking damage from this at all.
• Rune of Blood – Applies this to his primary target, healing Saurfang for 10 times the damage done. Your off-tank will taunt off until the debuff is gone.
• Mark of the Fallen Champion – Applies this to a random raid member once he reaches 100 blood power. This deals ~5000 damage every 3 seconds as long as that player is alive. It cannot be removed in any way, shape or form. Using a Soul Stone or Rebirth will keep the debuff on that target as well. If the targetted player dies, Saurfang will heal for 5% of his total health. Every tick of damage from this grants Saurfang 1 blood power.
• Frenzy – Triggers at 25%. Causes Saurfang to attack faster, thus generating blood power at a much faster rate. This is the time for Bloodlust/Heroism.
• Summon Blood Beasts – Summons 2 Blood Beasts that are vulnerable to all forms of root/snares. Every time a Blood Beast deals damage, Saurfang will get 1 blood power.

The first thing you want to keep in mind is that your tanks and your melee DPS will never leave Saurfang for the entire fight. Your tanks and melee can also not use any form of AoE attacks to avoid drawing aggro from the Blood Beasts and taking damage to give Saurfang un-needed blood power. If you’re using a Druid tank, make sure they’re not using Glyph of Maul. Warriors should not Cleave, Shockwave or Thunderclap. Pally tanks should not Consecrate, using Hamer of the Righteous or that AoE shield thingy. DK tanks should avoid using Death and Decay, Heart Strike, Blood Boil and Pestilence.

Once your group gets the timing down of the Blood Beasts and the beasts are killed off, the DPS and tanks can use AoE abilities for a short period of time. My guild would rather be safe than sorry so we don’t use any AoE abilities in melee range at all. It’s a shame to see a perfect run get turned upside down because your Ret Pally wants to use Divine Storm or your Fury Warrior wants to use Whirlwind and hits a Blood Beast right when it spawns.

As mentioned above, your tanks will need to taunt off of each other as they get Rune of Blood to avoid healing Saurfang during the encounter. The longer this fight goes on, the more likely it’s going to lead to a wipe. As more people get Mark of the Fallen Champion, he’s going to generate blood power much faster, and you don’t want that to happen at all. The entire point of the fight is to avoid letting him generate too much blood power. Chances are your group will get at least 1 Mark, maybe 2, but any more than that and it’s going to be really tough for your healers to keep everyone up as well as the tanks.

When it comes to healers, it’s best to only use 2 for this encounter and have the 3rd switch over to their DPS spec. There isn’t a lot of damage going on until Mark of the Fallen Champion starts going around, but your group should have him down to ~30-35% by then, so having the extra DPS definitely outweighs having un-needed healing.

Saurfang will be tanked on the stairs right where the event starts, facing away from the raid. Your two healers should be behind him at max range from the tanks, spread apart 10 yards so they don’t hit each other with Blood Nova. Your ranged DPS should be 10 yards in front of your healers, spread out 10 yards from each other as well for the same reason.

Dealing with Blood Boil, Blood Nova and Rune of Blood are quite easy - It’s dealing with the Blood Beasts that can be tricky.

They spawn pretty frequently in groups of 2 and as long as your tanks and melee don’t attack them, they’ll run straight for your healers which is what you want to happen. Use every form of root and snare you have to kill them off as fast as possible without getting a single person hit, not even once.

Every ranged class has some form of root/snare, and some of them may have to go back and respec to pick those up. This is one of those encounters that may require your raid leader to “force” people to spec and glyph a certain way. Lets take a look at each ranged class..

• Moonkin – Typhoon, Entangling Roots. A majority of raiding Moonkin never spec in to Typhoon but this is one of those encounters where it’s definitely worth it to go back and spec in to it. Do not glyph to remove the knockback. This is why you want Typhoon here in the first place. It’ll knock back every target in front of them and apply a daze for 6 seconds. Entangling Roots comes in handy to restrain the 2nd beast.
• Elemental Shaman – Thunderstorm. All Ele Shaman take Thunderstorm for the mana regen as far as I know. I think there is a glyph to remove the knockback but you want to make sure they’re not using it during this fight. Thunderstorm is an AoE knockback around the Shaman.
• Hunters – Frost trap, Concussion Shot, Distracting Shot. Hunters are by far the biggest help on this fight and if your raid team doesn’t have one, I pity you. Make sure your Hunter is reapplying the Frost Trap right on top of Saurfang so it triggers immediately and keeps the CC on the ground at all times. Hunters should Concussion Shot whichever add is being killed first and use Distracting Shot on the other add if it gets too close to a healer. Once the add gets close to the Hunter, they can Feign Death or use some other form of wicked OP Hunter CC, as long as they aren’t getting hit.
• Mage – Slow, Deep Freeze, Frost Nova, Frostbolt. If your Mage(s) is Arcane, make them spec in to Slow. If they’re Frost (now that it’s somewhat viable), make sure they are not using the Frostbolt glyph.
• Warlock – Shadowfury, Curse of Exhaustion. A majority of raiding Warlocks are Destruction, so make them spec in to Shadowfury for the stun. If they’re Affliction, make them take Curse of Exhaustion. If they’re Demonology, ask them to spec in to something else unless you have enough CC elsewhere.
• Shadow Priest – Mind Flay. The snare effect from Mind Flay is priceless in this fight and doesn’t effect the Shadow Priest’s spec or rotation in any way.

Mix these up however you want, but your primary objective is to not let the Blood Beasts land a single blow to anyone. As soon as they’d spawn in my group, they’d hit the Hunter’s Frost Trap and become snared. We’d always kill off the left add first and then the right. If the left add wasn’t dead before they left the Frost Traps zone, I’d Typhoon them back away from us and daze them. By this time, the left add was dead and the right add would start making it’s way toward one of us. Our Mage would apply slow and our Shadow Priest would DPS like normal to apply the Mind Flay snare.

At 25%, Saurfang will Frenzy and increase his attack speed. This will cause him to generate blood power much faster so you’ll want to go all out at this point, using Bloodlust/Heroism and DPS cooldowns to get him to 0% as fast as possible. He’ll still spawn Blood Beasts at this time and it’s much more important for your DPS to kill them and go back to DPS’ing Saurfang, but your melee DPS should still only be attacking him, not the beasts.

Protips (lulz):

• If you’re using a Pally healer, have them heal with Righteous Fury on to increase the chances of the Blood Beasts targetting them.
• Moonkin should be in the middle so Typhoon knocks the Blood Beasts directly behind Saurfang. Typhooning from an angle will knock one of them out of the Frost Trap and closer to another DPS.
• Since all of the damage dealt in this encounter is physical, Mages can use Amplify Magic on the entire raid to increase the amoun of healing received by everyone.

The Gunship Battle is the 3rd encounter in the Lower Spire of Icecrown Citadel. It is a mix of vehicle combat and good ol’ fashioned tank and spank, but a very fun, stress-free encounter.

I forgot what the Alliance gunship looks like so they get a Converse All-star balloon instead of a bitchin' shark face.

The gunship encounter will break your raid team up in to two seperate teams – the attackers and defenders. Everyone should grab a jetpack which will be used by your attacking team to jump on board the enemy gunship during the “frozen” phase. It’s best to have everyone grab a jetpack just incase someone on the attacking team dies and you need a replacement.

Your faction’s gunship will have 2 guns that should be controlled by 2 ranged DPS. These will be the source of your damage to the enemy ship so it’s best to get comfortable with it as fast as possible.

These guns have 2 abilities (that I forget the name of)..

• Normal shot – Fast shot dealing ~1000 damage to the enemy gunship and builds up 5-9 “heat”.
• Big shot – Deals damage to the enemy gunship based on the amount of “heat” stored in the gun. More heat = more damage.

The point is to use the normal shot until you build up ~90 heat and then firing off the big shot as a finisher. If you hit 100 heat, you’ll overheat the gun, giving it an ~8 second cooldown. Seeing as how this is the only way to damage the enemy ship, it’s best to play it safe and fire it off around 90 heat. You’ll want to deal as much damage as possible during the gun phase before the opposing gunship summons a Mage that will freeze your guns, forcing your DPS out of their control until the attacking team launches over and kills them.

Your attacking team should consist of your best geared tank, your best healer and all of your melee DPS. Once your guns are frozen, your attacking team will use their jetpacks to launch over to the opposing gunship and kill off the Mage add. Your tank will actually be tanking Bronzebeard or Saurfang (depending on your faction) while the melee DPS takes out the mage. The longer your group is over there, their leader will gain a stacking buff that increases their damage done to your tank. If it looks like your tank is taking too much damage, have your attackers jump back to your own ship, wait for the debuff to wear off and then head back over.

Once the Mage is dead, your guns become useable again and you repeat until one of the two gunships are taken out. During the whole gunning and jumping back and forth fiasco, the rest of your team will be dodging rockets shot over by the opposing gunship. They leave an obvious marking on the ground, so they’re easily avoidable. Portals will also spawn above your deck that will spit out adds that need to be picked up and held by your off-tank and killed off by your DPS between gunning and jumping.

That’s really it. There is a lot going on but it’s not overwhelming. It may take an attempt or two to get the mechanics down, but it’s pretty straightforward and just a lot of fun after banging your head against a wall learning the Deathwhisper fight.

Lady Deathwhisper is the 2nd of 4 boss encounters in the Lower Spire of the Icecrown Citadel raid instance. This battle consists of 2 phases – one phase consisting of fighting off waves of adds with various buffs while DPSing down her Mana Shield and the final phase which is tank and spank with a twist or two.

Yeah, I know that's not her name..

Phase 1

Watch the ‘eff out for..

• Death and Decay – AoE dropped under a random raid member. Deals a healable amount of damage but should be avoided altogether.
• Shadowbolt – She has no aggro table and instead targets random raid members with Shadowbolt.
• Curse of Torpor – Your next ability used will have a 15 second cooldown. This needs to be dispelled as soon as it’s put up. Don’t put all of the strain on your healers. Ask your Moonkin or Mages to help with this.

During phase 1, Deathwhisper will have a mana shield around her, preventing anyone from actually draining her health pool but instead converting the damage done to her to her mana pool. In order to get in to phase 2, you need to get her mana pool down to 1%.

Phase 1 is a bit more complicated than just draining her mana though, so I hope you didn’t think it would be that easy! While you’re DPSing through her Mana Shield, she’ll do nasty things like drop Death and Decay underneath random raid members, put up a super nasty curse and randomly hit people with Shadowbolts. It also doesn’t end there, either! Every 60 seconds, she’ll spawn 3 adds on one side of the room that you’ll be killing off.

Announcer: But wait! There’s more!

Each side will be a mix of caster and melee adds that Deathwhisper can “empower”, buffing them with Vampiric Might and granting them some form of ass whoopery.

Announcer: Is that all, Abi?

FFS, I wish! But.. no. Once the adds die, Deathwhisper can “reanimate” them and, depending on if they’re melee or a caster, grant them very high mitigation to either physical or spell damage. All of this chaos really forces your team to come up with a game plan with the quickness, but lucky for you, I’ve drawn this handy diagram to help out!

The babies in wookie costumes are the melee add spawn points, the iPOD’s are the caster add spawn points and the bottle of hand sanitizer is Lady Deathwhispers location. She’ll stay stationary during all of phase 1. The adds always start off spawning on the left side of the room, facing Deathwhisper, and it’s the same 3 every single time. 60 seconds after those spawn, the right side of the room spawns and, again, it’s the same 3 adds every single time. You can tell by the sweet lolagram I made that the left side of the room has 2 melee and 1 caster while the right side is 1 melee and 2 casters.

Whichever add she “empowers” will be the primary kill target, but your DPS needs to be smart about it and take 2 things in to consideration. If she buffs a caster, they’ll get a shield around them that can only be destroyed by physical damage and will also reflect spells back at the caster. If she buffs a melee, they’ll transform in to a large green and purple Incredible Hulk looking thing that hits like a dumptruck. If your tank is at least ToC-25 geared, they can tank it until DPS burns it down, but if your tank is undergeared it’s best to kite them around while DPS takes it out. All adds can get Vampiric Might from Dark Transformation, a magic buff that heals them for 300% of the damage they deal and increasing their damage done by 25%, so assign someone to dispel/purge/spellsteal it off as fast as possible.

You can also tell which add Deathwhisper is going to “reanimate” because instead of dying and despawning, they’ll cast Dark Martyrdom and explode, becoming a skeleton corpse. If it’s a melee add, they’re highly invulnerable to physical damage and should be taken out by caster DPS or Ret Pallies. If it’s a caster add, they’re highly invulerable to magic damage and should be taken out by melee DPS.

The TL;DR version – Empowered and Reanimated adds are your #1 kill priority.

The fastest way in to phase 2 is to have both tanks and all of your DPS ready to kill one side as fast as possible, prioritizing Empowered and Reanimated adds, and then DPSing Deathwhisper’s Mana Shield until the next wave spawns. While you’re killing adds, watch out for Death and Decay, heal through the Shadowbolts and de-curse Curse of Torpor as fast as possible. Repeat this until she reaches about 10% mana and use Bloodlust/Heroism between an add phase to bring her in to phase 2 safetly, without fear of getting boned by another wave of adds at the same time.

Phase 2

AMG! Watch out for..

• Frostbolt – Single target Frostbolt ability that should be interrupted just like in the Kel’Thuzad fight. Hit’s for ~37,000 frost damage which can be mitigated by a Pally’s Frost Resist Aura just in case one manages to slip through. Also slows movement speed by 50% for 4 seconds which is no good.
• Frostbolt Volley – Uninterruptable. Deals ~12,000 frost damage to the entire raid that can be mitigated by Frost Resist Aura. Also slows movement speed.
• Touch of Insignificance – Reduces the current targets threat generation by 20%. Stacks up to 5 times and lasts 30 seconds.
• Summon Vengeful Shade – Summons a non-targettable, non-killable ghost that will target a random raid member and chase them for a short period of time. At the end of the chase, they’ll explode for ~18,000 damage to anyone within 15 yards.

Once she hits 1% mana, she’ll no longer spawn adds but will for some unknown reason forget how to cast Shadowbolt and use Frostbolt instead. The single target Frostbolt can and should be interrupted while Frostbolt Volley has to be healed through and mitigated with Frost Resist Aura.

The main thing to watch out for are the summoned Vengeful Shades. These are the game breakers that can turn a flawless run in to a wipe. They’re transparent, light blue and not easily aviodable, especially as melee since you really don’t have a lot of room for error. With their 15 yard blast radius, chances are someone is going to get hit by one of these 9 out of 10 times. Everyone should have over 18k health, it’s just important that your healers keep everyone topped off at 100%, especially the tanks. The last thing you want to happen is for your melee to explode a ghost on your tank at the same time he eats a 40k Frostbolt that wasn’t interrupted. It’s happened to us and it sucks.

Your tanks will want to taunt off of each other each time one of them gets Touch of Insignificance, letting the debuff fall off of the other tank before taunting it back. Remember this is just a threat gen debuff, so if your tanks have a nice lead it’s not the end of the world. DPS will just have to watch Omen until the 2nd tank can taunt Deathwhisper off.

Phase 2 is all about beating the enrage timer (which is very easy in 10-man) and partially about luck with your tanks not getting eaten by ghosts and Frostbolts at the same time. The hardest part of the entire encounter is getting your group to transition between phase 1 and phase 2 without getting stuck tanking her with a set of adds.

Lord Marrowgar is the first of four bosses in the Lower Spire of the Icecrown Citadel raid instance. The main focus of this fight is the postioning and coordination of your raid team. If everyone pays attention to what they’re standing in and your tanks are joined at the hip, it should be a short fight and a nice way to welcome you to ICC.

Things to watch out for:

• Saber Lash – Deals 50,000 damage to his primary target. Splits damage with 1 nearby ally. Both tanks need to stand on top of each other to split the damage while melee attacks from behind, as usual.
• Bone Spike Graveyard – Targets a random raid member (never the tanks) and impales them, dealing damage over time until the “spike” is killed by the DPS to free them.
• Coldflame – Targets a random raid member and places a stream of blue flame on the ground, dealing damage to anyone standing in it. Although it looks like fire, the damage is actually frost-based and can be mitigated with Pally auras.
• Bone Storm - Marrowgar whirlwinds around the room for ~15 seconds, changing targets every 5 seconds and whirlwinding toward them. Each target change, he will drop 4 Coldflame streams in an “X” pattern across the floor. The end of the Bone storm phase is an aggro dump.

Positioning:

Light blue – Lord Marrowgar
Red – 2 tanks
Yellow – Melee DPS
Green – Healers. Middle dot should be the tank healer with raid healers on the left and right.
Blue – Ranged DPS split evenly between the healers. Yeah the blue looks kinda purple =\.

This is how everyone should be positioned during the tank and spank phase of the fight. During the Bone Storm whirlwind phase, everyone will need to move around the room, spreading out to avoid standing in Coldflames, but after the phase is over the tanks will reposition him back in this locations and everyone else will go back to their assigned locations.

The strategy:

Mark your tanks with raid icons so they can keep track of each other during the Bone Storm phase and have them pull Marrowgar, positioning him in the location indicated on my horrible MS Paint map. Allow your raid members to position themselves and then let DPS rip in to him as hard as possible.

He used to hit pretty hard, especially with Saber Lash, but his damage was nerfed in a hotfix around 12/14/09 so it’s a lot more manageable if you’re a tad undergeared. Healers need to be prepared to deal with spikes of damage from time to time as well as topping anyone off who’ll become afflicted with Bone Spike Graveyard or a tick or two of Coldflame still.

Coldflame targets a random raid member and travels to their location, leaving a blue stream in it’s path that lasts for ~8 seconds, so it’s completely avoidable in the tank and spank phase by side-stepping it. During the Bone Storm phase, 4 Coldflame streams will shoot out from Marrowgar’s location in an “X” pattern across the floor which are a little more difficult to avoid.

The only other thing to watch out for is Bone Spike Graveyard. This will impale someone with a targettable “spike” that will deal damage to the target until they die or the spike is destroyed. Healers can toss some HoTs on the impaled target and go back to focusing on the tanks. If you have at least 3 ranged DPS, they can handle the Bone Spike victims themselves, but if you’re more melee heavy have everyone take them down. The only time melee shouldn’t help attack the spikes is if the victim is impaled above a Coldflame.

When Marrowgar goes in to Bone Storm mode, everyone’s top priority is to spread out and not stand in Coldflames because he shoots out 4 of them every time he switches targets. Spreading out will spread out the mass amount of Coldflame streams and the amount of raid-wide damage from his Bone Storm whirlwind. The whirlwind itself is actually a joke, only hitting for 3-4.5k on cloth, but you don’t want to stress out your healers in case you get bad luck on the Coldflame placements during this phase. If you’re a DPS with the ability to heal, help out during this phase if needed, but it really shouldn’t be as long as your group isn’t humping each other.

Melee will want to avoid chasing him around to DPS him, making their #1 priority to spread out from each other, but ranged DPS can feel free to DPS him for the first 10 seconds or so. The end of the Bone Storm phase is an aggro dump, and our #1 cause of death was melee continuing to DPS and pulling threat. An Arms Warrior can’t eat a 50k Saber Lash. Marrowgar was untauntable, making the aggro dump a bit more difficult, but a hotfix went in to place 12/17/09 to make him tauntable, killing any sort of challenge in this encounter.

Protips (lulz):

1. Bloodlust/Heroism after the first Bonesaw phase.
2. From personal experience, DK tanks take more damage than other tanks in this encounter. Not having the ability to block attacks and having a -20% dodge chance from the ICC raid debuff gives them very little avoidance overall, especially considering Parry’s diminishing returns. It’s definitely doable, but healers may notice they’re harder to keep up.
3. Have your tanks “double pot” a +armor pot right before the pull if you’re having trouble with the initial positioning. This will free up their health pot cooldown once they get in to combat and give them a little more freedom to position Marrowgar at first, just incase one tank falls behind and the other eats the entire Saber Lash. This shouldn’t even be an issue for any ToC geared tanks.
4. Make sure your melee doesn’t fail during Bonesaw phase and runs around trying to DPS Marrowgar, hiting every Coldflame along the way.
5. Moonkin – Use Force of Nature during tank and spank phases. You can squeeze out the most DPS by using Starfall to help Bone Spike Graveyard victims and still get a little DPS in on Marrowgar. Squeeze out more DPS during Bone Storm by keeping up both DoTs and getting some Wrath spams in while you’re not dodging Coldflame.

Anything I missed? Want to add class-specific Protips? Leave me a comment!

On Wednesday, both of our 10-man teams cleared through the first 3 bosses of ICC-10 and got hung up on Saurfang. This, to me, is the first “true” challenge in ICC-10, requiring a lot more out of your raid team than the other 3 encounters. I don’t say that to discredit the achivement of killing Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and the Gunship battle, which all have their own unique learning curves, but all 3 of those encounters have more room for error where I feel that Saurfang does not.

Neither of our 10-man teams could get him down on Wednesday so we both went back in last night to give it another go. Group 1 was plagued with their Hunter’s frequent disconnects while he was add wrangling. He plays from Spain and we’ve never had an issue with his connection before but he was disconnecting up to 3 times per attempt. They got him to 2% twice but the frequent disconnects made handling the adds very difficult, leading to wipes both times. Eventually they got him down, when they should have gotten him down 2 hours before, but they still got him. A win is a win is a win in my book.

My 10:30pm group was still trying to fine tune our strategy and it came down to perfecting our add wrangling and using Bloodlust at 25% for the Frenzy phase. We wiped twice but got him down on the third try, snagging the “I’ve gone and made a mess” achievement. We also picked up “Boned” from the Marrowgar fight on Wednesday. Since the Mage in our group won the Spyglass trinket from the Gunship fight, I had no competition for the cloth caster boots that dropped and FINALLY got out of my iLVL 213 boots.

I tweaked my Balance spec a little bit and had to include Typhoon to help with adds. It’s really not a bad trade-off since I just took 1 point out of one of my mana regen talents and still had zero mana issues during the fight, never using an Innervate on myself and finishing around 45% mana.

It feels pretty nice to have both of our 10-man groups 4/4 in ICC-10, I just hope we can get more than Marrowgar down in ICC-25. Deathwhisper chewed us up last weekend and it’s definitely a significant increase in difficulty from the 10-man encounter. Marrowgar just hits harder, has more health and spikes 3 people instead of 1. Deathwhisper spawns adds on 3 sides.. all at the same time.. and an already complex strategy to explain has 3 or 4 new abilities to throw in to the mix. Have you ever had to explain the Deathwhisper fight to a raid before? It’s exhausting and confusing, isn’t it?

Well there is my update from the raid front, but have you all noticed the mass-amount of hotfixes lately? Lets take a look at the good ones..

• Ionar, the annoying lightning boss in Halls of Lightning, will now only disperse once during the course of the fight. I was just complaining about this the other day! When you take a geared group in there, he drops like a rock between phases so it’s just a bunch of pointless running around. Thank you Blizz!
• Prophet Tharon’ja, the last boss in Drak’tharon Keep, will now only use Consume Flesh once during the encounter. Same annoyance factor as Ionar previously, but it looks like Blizz is catching on now that more geared people are farming the random heroics. It was really a big PITA to jump out of skelly form, get off one Moonfire, half a Wrath cast and then get transformed again.
• Lord Marrowgar, the first boss in ICC, is now tauntable and deals much less melee damage in the 10-man encounter. I don’t really feel this was needed as it makes the encounter much much easier now. It’s already a fine entry level ICC boss, but this sort of puts him near a “loot pinata” status. It’s the final tier of raiding content and he’s now tankable in someone with Ulduar gear which, in my opinion, shouldn’t be the case. If someone in Karazhan gear tried to tank the first boss in Black Temple or Sunwell, they would have gotten destroyed. I think our healers were falling asleep during this fight after the hotfix! Time to start 2-healing it.
• The item level requirement to queue up for Halls of Reflection has been increased. Thank. Friggin. Elune. I couldn’t tell you the amount of horribly undergeared tanks I’ve gotten for this place! Tanks showing up in blues that aren’t enchanted or even gemmed, some wearing PVP gear because they think “stam equals tank”, some in DPS specs with tanking gear on, etc. It’s been horrible.
• Deathbring Saurfang encounters difficulty increased. The change was to Rune of Blood, the debuff he puts on the tank that heals him for 5x the damage dealt now heals him for 10x the damage dealt. The only thing this does is stress the importance of using 2 tanks on this fight to taunt off of each other as they get the debuff, rather than trying to solo tank him.
• Quel’delar is now a unique-equipped item. No more Titans Grip Warriors swinging 2 of these things.
• The drop rate for the Battered Hilt was decreased.. and then increased again on 12/14. Does Blizzard realize these things are being need rolled for selling, not using? The drop rate is only going to affect how much they sell for.
• A new 22-slot bag was added as an epic drop in heroic Forge of Souls.
• The players gunship in the Gunship Battle of Icecrown raid encounter will now properly dock after completing the event. My 10-man group had this bug happen where our Horde gunship would just stop in its tracks after downing the Alliance gunship. We got our loot, but we had no way off the gunship outside of jumping off the side. AAAIIIIEEE!
• The new Ephemeral Snowflake trinket will now proc off of ANY heal, not just direct heals. I still want this trinket on my Druid and Priest, but both times I’ve seen it drop I was in there as DPS. Drat!
• Everlasting Affliction, the Affliction talent that refreshes the duration of Corruption when the target is damaged by Haunt or Drain Life, will now also trigger from Shadowbolt. The new Glyph of Quick Decay was causing Corruption to fade before the cooldown to Haunt was up, so this was a good fix. They also announced today that they’re going to add Drain Soul in to trigger Everlasting Affliction in another hotfix, so Afflocks everywhere can rejoice with shadowy tears of joy!

I’m still betting that Halls of Reflection will be nerfed, even though it’s not that hard once you figure out the LoS trick by tanking everything in one of the side rooms. There is still a ton of QQ in our trade chat about it, but I think the gear requirement on the tanks for that heroic is a bit steep. Managing the add waves is much more difficult than the actual boss encounters. Hell, the 2nd boss is one of the easiest bosses in any heroic (just with more health) and the final chase event is just free loot. It’s the new heroic Magister’s Terrace which was a heroic for raiders.

I’m still working on my “Lrn2Icecrown” boss strats for ICC-10, so keep an eye out – they’ll be posted as soon as I finish them up.

Coming up on the 4th and final hour of our first night in ICC-25, I started to scan the raid members for flasks and saw that 10 of the 25 people didn’t have one on at this point. I asked each person by name why they didn’t have one on and got everything from “there were none in the AH” to “I forgot to bring them”, so to help prevent this from happening again I set up a 5 DKP penalty for anyone who shows up without flasks.

5 DKP is equal to an hour of raid time, so it’s not that steep of a penalty but I wasn’t quite sure which type of penalty to put in place, if any at all. Someone not wearing a flask makes everyone else work harder, in my opinion, so I think it should have some sort of penalty.

Does your guild have any set rules for this type of thing? If so, what are they?

*The title is actually a quote from Chris Pontius from Jackass.