25-man Lich King

The atmosphere is almost tangible, when finally all the hard work and effort pays off, as the encounter is defeated and the Lich King falls to the ground. It validates all the decisions and paths that we have taken as a guild, letting us know that we did it right. The right people were at the right place and at the right time.

Now it is time to look for future the horizon, raise the par even more and begin tackling the hard modes of Icecrown Citadel, while at the same time bring in those who couldn't fit into last night's kill, so we can all enjoy it.

Heroes of the Alliance, I salute you.

Sindragosa Down

This has truly been a good week, progression wise. First we get the Lich King down on 10-man and now the path has been cleared in 25-man, all the way to the top of the Icecrown Citadel. The only thing between us and the completion of the whole normal modes content is the Lich King himself.

The battle is set and we will reign victorious!

Glance at Heroic Modes

So the Lich King is dead and understandably, come next lockdown and we were all eager to sink our teeth into the heroic modes of Icecrown Citadel. But even with a lot of research on the previous days, I do not think any of us were quite prepared for them. After all, we knew they would be harder, but would they really be that much harder? In a word, yes, the heroic modes are an incredibly refreshing experience after the easy normal modes and we were really taken back just by the Lord Marrowgar encounter. I am going to go through the first wing of bosses, just reviewing some of our experiences and the changes to the bosses.

Lord Marrowgar

In a twisted way, for me, this is actually the hardest of the first four encounters. In simplest terms, the damage that the raid takes has gone up and is by no means trivial anymore. Both the bonestorm and fires are big killers, and the fight is actually all about avoiding as much as possible of it. Just on a plate tank, we recorded over 10k ticks from the whirlwind and our resto shaman reported that he can at best take 2-3 ticks of it before quickly dying.

We eventually went with a 1 tank, 4 healers, and 5 dps setup. One tank should be quite capable of tanking Marrowgar alone, and in fact, it simplifies the tank’s job when he avoids the fires. When bonestorms were imminent (5 seconds or so) the raid would quickly spread, healers divided between the two sides. This is so that when Marrowgar charges someone, he will only hit max 1-2 people, who quickly move out of the way. If you have good ranged dps, they will absolutely shine on this fight, because they are able to break spikes even from middle of fire.

Lady Deathwhisper

After Lord Marrowgar, we were suddenly taken back at just how much simpler Deathwhisper is. Essentially, the big change is during the last phase. The only change to the first phase seems to be a bigger mana pool and she will CC a random person, like on 25-man normal mode. It might have been just me, but also seemed that there were also a lot more martyrs among the adds. In several cases, we had easily three risen martyrs to deal with and dps really need to watch for them.

The second phase, unlike normal mode is tanked by the stairs, at the entrance because Deathwhisper continues to periodically summon one add. She will also summon one vile spirit, which must be avoided at all cost because it explodes with an 20 yard AoE and hits really hard. It always goes for a specific person, so that person should kite it around for a few seconds.

For tanks, Deathwhisper is more of a challenge because she is immune to taunts. We sort of went heads first into it and had no defining tactics for it. Because our stacks grew so high, the person tanking the boss, would also have to tank the add and once the stacks fell off, the second tank had to get tricks in order to catch up quickly. We got her down, but I am thinking there must be an easier way to control the stacks and get a much more cleaner kill.

The Gunship Battle

Out of all the encounters, this one really is a joke. There is a little bit more damage from missiles and axes, but in general, you will hardly notice that it is on heroic mode. Like always we sent two hardcore melee dps over to the other ship, along with a tank and the mage, even with a bigger health pool, went down like a rock. The only hiccup we had was apparently an axe thrower, who for some strange, unforeseeable reason, enraged and started hitting really hard, causing our resto shaman to die total of three times, giving us a whole lot of hilarity once we finally docked.

Deathbringer Saurfang

We actually did not get many good tries on this boss because we were running out of time at this point, causing us to miss the kill but I am fairly confident we unlocked the necessary mechanic to get him down as soon as we get our next attempts. The trick with Saurfang is controlling the adds. There is a lot more damage during the encounter, but it is still doable with just two healers. Make sure you have one holy paladin and one raid healer; priest, druid, or shaman, all are good choices. The healers need to pay good attention to the marks of the fallen, for there will be more of them (thanks to Saurfang’s bigger health pool) and none of the targets are allowed to die, or the boss will heal 20%.

But with competent players, the real challenge of the fight lies with the beasts. When they spawn, they move wicked fast and basically one-shot any nontank. You need to device a strategy to keep them in control, which is why you need really good ranged dps to kill them out. Melee dps can help out, but only if they do not pull aggro on them and the beast is not rooted. A rooted beast hits anything within melee range, which is usually an eager melee dps.

Death knights are ideal for using chain of ice and I found the best tactic is to actually spam roots on one beast, while the second is slowed and zerged down by the combined ranged dps. Once the first one dies, they finish the second one off and the ideally, neither of the two beasts never get far from the boss to begin with.

All and all, we had a lot of fun doing these heroic modes and if you’re any like us, finding the normal modes boring, you should enjoy the heroics a lot more also. The changes aren’t truly severe, but there are more actual mechanics to overcome and the margin for poor performance has been almost completely removed. If you are focused, the encounters should not be overwhelming but wipe fest starts the minute you lose your concentration.

Good luck everyone.

Fall of the Lich King

I was suppose to report our latest Sindragosa kill last night, but held off the news in the event that our Lich Kings would be successful before the next reset. To all of our great delight, the Lord of the Scourge finally fell, after many attempts and tactical refinements, and when he hit the much anticipated 10% the joy was tangible in our local vent channel.

 

To a great misfortune, our paladin tank had to endure bad connections throughout the night, which eventually cost him his lich king kill, with achievements and loot when he dropped offline right at the very last moments and did not resurface until we were all staring at the loot boxes. Hopefully the GMs can fix this for us, giving him the credit he deserves along with the rest of us.

Loot included nice pieces, such as Windrunner’s Heartseeker and Troggbane, Axe of the Frostborne King, both eagerly received. Now we can finally get to work on the heroic modes and I dare say, next week’s lockdown will be very exciting.

Thanks for all nine who were with us. Nice work.

Icecrown Citadel Hotfixes

This is a bit of a misnomer, they are not really fixes, as in fixing bugs, but rather diminishing the difficulty of some boss fights. Anyone who reads wow.com or mmo-champion.com has already seen this. For me, I am still digesting and wondering what is going on. We already received a buff to the instance on all three fronts; more health, more damage, and more healing. Now, we are receiving nerfs that are about to completely trivialize the encounters, or at least some of them.

Lets examine the Lord Marrowgar encounter for instance; I was rather pleased when there were aspects to the fight that involved more on my part, than just standing in one spot and going round and around my tanking rotation. For one, I had to continuously dodge the cold flames. Second, I have to work together with my fellow tank, always sync our movements when dodging the flames. Thirdly, was my responsibility to taunt the boss after each bladestorm.

Except, now the bladestorm no longer resets aggro, which means I can just stand still during the storm and resume randomly smashing buttons when he returns to me. I understand that there are many fights in the instances that represent a significant challenge to players, but this is not one of them. I have seen tanks fail at aggroing the boss after a bladestorm and each time, I would wonder where they learned to play.

It is the easiest thing in the world, just dodge the coldflames and be within taunting range of the boss when the storm fades, and watch the DBM timer. Since taunts are effective for three seconds, you need only wait until there is less than three seconds on the timer and hit taunt. I promise, if you are not a horrible tank, you will have no problems resuming and building aggro on the boss, thanks to that taunt and neither a healer or any dps are in danger of being killed.

Another nerf to make tanking almost trivial is on Rotface, where as part of the excitement was that Mutated Infections arrive faster and faster as the fight progresses, making finishing the fight a fun challenge. Now, that speed no longer exists, at least not to an extent and running around the room with a goo behind you, seems no longer very exciting.

There are not a whole many tanking challenges in this instance, if you really begin counting them. Mostly it is about switching aggroes via taunt at certain stacks, which is conveniently eased by the use of DBM. Encounters like Rotface make tanking a joy, when you really have to do something and focus on execution. I was delighted the first time I did Rotface, as the mechanic was something new and fun for me.

At least I can hope Blizzard can refrain from nerfing Icecrown Citadel any further. Just ignore the moans about difficult it is. People who complain about it, obviously do not know how to appreciate it properly. They just want to run in, faceroll a bunch of stuff and come out bragging they killed the Lich King.

For full source of the changes, read the blue.

Falric and Marwyn

The Halls of Reflection is are probably considered, by the World of Warcraft community as a whole, the most difficult and annoying heroic instance in the game. Frozen Throne has two other instances, but neither is really as frustrating as this one. The reason is because Halls of Reflection really stretches both the tank’s and healer’s skill, under a lot of pressure. Much like the original Oculus, back in the day, it is very hard to get through.

I have recently gone back and farmed myself some black icicle weapons for my dual-wield spec and watching some of my friends try get through it last night, decided I would put together this small overview and tips how I usually tank it.

Specifically, the first two bosses, Falric and Marwyn, in on themselves, are easy. The problem is the eight waves of mobs that spawn in between the boss fights; four waves before Falric and another four before Marwyn, each wave getting consecutively harder to get through.

In essence, the tactic is simple; there are two smaller chambers to the left and right from the entrance. It is, by far, easiest to control the mobs by bottling them at the small and narrow entrance. For us, as DKs, this is easy by laying a Death and Decay just few seconds before the next wave becomes active. Rest of the group should hide behind the small corners in the room, to prevent the mobs from targeting them first. Of course, they inevitably will but that is what the DnD is for. It will take the small initial aggro for you, while you group all the mobs and hit them with some real AoE.

I always tank this in my frost spec, because you really need to take everything out of your AoE in this encounter, and frost has the best AoE abilities from the three DK tanking specs. Each of the mobs have their special abilities, but only few are worth the mention.

Healers and casters, should, once the fight starts, back to the far wall of the chamber, to avoid silences and stuns (which can easily be a leading cause of tank death). There are two ranged type mobs, the dwarf rifleman and the human mage. As a tank, after laying down my DnD, I always back up a few steps, once the ranged type is within death grip range of the doorway, pull them in and rest goes smoothly.

Issues rise when eager dps starts on the mobs before I have a chance to pull the ranged in, because before that, there is no point wasting aoe spells on them. Another annoyance is when you have two ranged types, both the mage and rifleman. Usually then one gets left outside the chamber and a top dps dealer should run out and waste it as quick as possible. There just is no way to build aggro on it while you are dealing with rest of the group.

As for the rest, you want to focus the night elf priest first, if he is present. He can heal himself and his buddies. Next, I always go for the mercenary rogue, because he shadow steps and shanks people almost randomly. His poison ticks hit very hard, even on the tank, so kill him quickly. After that, it’s all the same and by that time, with only 2-3 mobs left, you healer should be getting some slack.

The bosses themselves are fairly simple. Falric is a healer test because he does a lot of aoe damage and can chain fear you. Much of the damage actually get received while everyone is feared, so as a healer, you need to top everyone up between fears. Usually the healer performance drops towards the end, so any extra dps is welcome to bring Falric down fast.

Marwyn is barely a breather compared to everything before him. He creates evil purple circles on the floor, usually under random players but other than that, he is a puppy. His Obliterate ability hits pretty hard and he can make his targets take more shadow damage and lower their maximum health but to be honest, I never had an issue healing through him, even with substandard equipment.

Run! Forest! Run!

I had my first come back to my death knight character last night, after a long break doing other things, and there is no place like Icecrown Citadel to have you wake up call. My first Rotface (tankspot vid) encounter was a fun experience, particularly since our MT was a warrior, thus falling on me to kite the oozes.

Usually when you’re the less experienced in the bunch, you tend to be given the safe assignments, but mine was pleasantly enjoyable.

For those of you who do not know the encounter, essentially the idea is that while the MT tanks the boss in the middle of the room, the OT stays on the room’s edges. The reason for this is that periodically the boss will drop Mutated Infection on a random person. When it is removed, it drops a small ooze, which cannot be tanked or taunted.

The idea is to get two removed at the same spot, so that in close proximity, they unite into one big ooze. This ooze is tauntable, which is the OT’s job. It will one shot you dead if it catches you, so you need to move and keep kiting it around the room. More small oozes will drop and they must be dragged in front of the big ooze, so it will swallow them and eventually, after five small ones, explode.

It required a few takes, but eventually, we got it and was just, simply a whole lot of fun.

The challenge is basically just the fact that a) quarter of the room is constantly flooded with slime that slows you down and b) towards the end of the fight, smaller oozes will show up at an accelerated rate. We had an extra big ooze on the floor total of three times. It can be bad, since the OT needs to then out run them both, but if you can get them to collide, one of them will instantly explode, since they still act like smaller oozes.

Welcome back to Azeroth Durithim :)

Shadowmourne Released

Blizzard has finally released some concrete information about this new legendary weapon, known so far as Shadowmourne. The first thing that became available was small preview of the item's lore and hints of how the weapon would actually be crafted, itself alone a fair epic in nature. We were giving three of these clues, and although not very specific, it hints to the line of questing that goes into a legendary weapon.

"... Shadowmourne must be hewn from piles of impure Saronite; the hardened blood of the Old God, Yogg-Saron treated only by master metal-shapers."

There are several clues here, one which is the obvious that whatever "impure saronite" is, it must be taken to Ulduar and somehow interact with the last boss, Yogg-Saron. Much the same way that Val'anyr had to be thrown into Yogg's mouth before slaying him. Perhaps saronite is imbued with Yogg's blood or yogg's blood is just another component. The words "master metal-shapers" might just be a NPC smith in Dalaran, but could also mean that you will need a fellow guild member to forge the components together, either a grand master miner or blacksmith.

With the weapon itself forged, we have this:

"... it is vital that Shadowmourne be drenched in the souls of the most potent servants of the Scourge"

To me this seems very self-explanatory; just go ahead, armed with the weapon, behead enemies in the Icecrown Citadel raid instance. The fact that it mentions "most potent servants" suggests that you have to slay an X amount of raid bosses. How many or what the exact process is, I cannot say.

"... Shadowmourne is to be adorned with fragments of the Frozen Throne."

Again, as the last step, very self-revealing prerequisite, in which you must face Arthas at the last chamber of the instance, and defeat him - multiple times, since "fragments" is in plural. And then, finally in the end, from all the trouble, you will eventually be able to receive Shadowmourne as a just reward. As a level 284 item, it will most likely last you a very long time. Way into the next expansion.

Sounds definitely worth the trouble to me.

Chill of the Throne

When the news about this debuff came out, there was a visible shock among the tank community. What it essentially means is that when you enter the final raid instance, Icecrown Citadel, the dungeon will apply a constant debuff on everyone in the raid - lowering all dodge by 20%. While I am a stamina tank, all the way through (meaning I care a lot more about my total health than about my avoidance) it did make me stop on my tracks as well.

While going for mitigation, such as armor and health, is and has been more effective a long time now, tanks still need to rely on avoidance for much of their survivability. Now imagine that as a tank, your avoidance suddenly drops from 50% to 30%. That is pretty huge and makes you wonder what Blizzard is thinking.

However, once you reflect a bit, you begin to see the wisdom in it. The rattle among many tanks is still going but personally, I am not worried too much over it. The issue mainly stems from the cascading arms race, between tanks and raid bosses. Our gear, both health and avoidance have been steadily climbing, which forces Blizzard to create encounters that hit for more and more damage.

I am certain that many tanks will agree with my own frustration of tanking bosses where you are basically, constantly on the verge of dying. The rotation of two hits and a heal makes your health look like a yo-yo in desperate need of decaf. One slip, or just bad luck, gibs the tank, usually sending what's left of him rolling down hill - in seven pieces.

Now in Icecrown Citadel, Blizzard is attempting to rectify the problem by lowering our avoidance, so they can design more interesting encounters. I am all for this change and it is reassuring to know that this is also the way they will go with Cataclysm; encounters that have more interesting mechanics that affect way more whether you die or not, rather than just raw damage output.

This is not to say Icecrown Citadel will be easy. I imagine it will be the hardest of them all, for obvious reasons. The bosses still swing at the same rate, but will hit a lot more often, with less damage per hit.

However, I am greatly concerned by the fact that lowering avoidance will have a secondary effect on death knights; we rely on avoidance to give us rune strikes. This is our single-greatest threat generating ability. This is why, once we lose aggro, it is hard to get it back because when the boss is no longer swinging at us, we get no rune strikes, and also why we do not have snap aggro.

Reading the latest patch notes for 3.3 might see a fix for this issue, promising a 17% threat increase to rune strikes, to compensate. But still, I worry. Does 17% more threat compensate for the loss of 20% in avoidance? I hope so but will wait for the patch to go live before I count my eggs.

Into the Abyss

The first time when I entered and played through this instance, it was not only normal difficulty but also had many of the mechanics hardly in use. This was true particularly with the boss fights, which lead me personally without a sense of satisfaction. The instance is well designed, atmospheric and just beautiful to look at. The same is true for the Forge of Souls.

However, I a much better sense of the mechanics this time around and I even had the sense to grab a couple of screenshots. The nice thing about it is that, unlike so many other instances, Pit of Saron is not linear. You can go about killing the first two bosses whichever you want first, as well as free 20 slaves from wherever pleases you.

At the moment there are more slaves in the pit than you need to be able to save, so you are free to take your pick about your route and targets. The first boss, Forgemaster Garfrost is simple enough. As his health drops, he will stun you party and jump between his forges where he takes out a new weapon every time.

The only tricky bit of the fight are the adds around Garfrost's forge. Neither the boss or the adds can be pulled separately, so you have to quickly burn the adds down so you are not overwhelmed. Other than that the fight is still extremely simple; just tank and spank him.

Next up is the leper gnome on his private hunchback minion; Krick and Ick. I was happily surprised, particularly by this encounter because the first time around it was almost like fighting trash. Krick will drop poison buddles much like Grobbulus and needs to be kited. And by kiting I really mean it because the little twat is obsessed by his buddles.

He will also occasionally chase on your party members, when he uses an ability called Pursuit. I am unsure what else they can do at that point, except just run like the wind. It was not an issue for us, for we were insanely over geared for the encounter, but I can see it particularly nasty for low-gear level 80s.

Additionally, he will occasionally go through cycles of using poison nova and small arcane bombs around his immediately surrounding. He does not need to be tank during the bombs so both the tank and melee can, and should, freely circle around him and avoid the purple domes. The poison nova is a fairly high damage, so like during overloads on both the Iron Council and Mimiron, the party should get out of range.

The next part is definitely my favorite, as you must run through a gauntlet of undead, including a tunnel that is currently collapsing. Remember Hodir and the falling ice? Same deal, except you will tank trash and must keep moving at all times. Any tank who loves mobility and AOE tanking, this is the place for you.

The last boss has not changed much since my last visit. Tank him approx. where he lands but mindful of the frostbolts that his mount drops on your party. They fall fairly randomly and easily freeze you where you are standing. The good news is that the person who gets hit is marked by a hunter's mark, so you always know who it is.

Other abilities that he has include Forceful Smash and Overlord's Brand. The first is just a very strong hit that your tank has to soak. It hits for about 15k on heroic, so your party healer can keep the tank topped up, it should be a small problem but can be an issue if the healer gets frozen for instance.

If healing is scarce, the tank can always use a cooldown to help out. The brand is more annoying, as when it hits a dps player, all the damage produced by that person is diverted to the tank. If the target is a healer, all healing is directed to the Tyrannus.

All and all, the instance is only getting better as the PTR goes on and I think we can see the entirety come together as a very nice and coherent dungeon. If you are interested to see some video feed of the dungeon, I came across a good quality look at youtube.

Pit of Saron + Forgemaster Garfrost

Enjoy.

Shadowmourne

I consider myself fairly up to date on what goes on in the World of Warcraft workshop and was, among, without a doubt, millions who were reading the news from last Blizzcon, as they were flooding the internet. Yet I still completely missed news of this new legendary weapon. For me, it came completely out of the blue as I stumbled upon it by just sheer accident.

So what is this sword exactly? Information is very scarce at the moment. No stats have been released yet but we do know that it is a two-hander axe, aimed at melee classes. This means primarily warriors, paladins, and death knights (both dps and tanks). While it could possibly be wielded by other classes, Ghostcrawler has iterated (source) that the stats will favor the above classes.

It will be available in the Icecrown Citadel, the same way that Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings was available from Ulduar. Myself, I wonder about the name of the weapon. It sustains a striking resemblance to the Lich King's signature weapon, Frostmourne. I hope there is some rational lore attached to the name, for otherwise it is an uncomfortable recycling of ideas. By all means, I am thrilled that there is a legendary melee weapon coming out, as the last one was clearly a caster weapon, but will feel like a slight cheat if it is just a makeshift version of the real thing.

Some people point out strongly that the legendary weapon from Icecrown Citadel should have been Frostmourne itself, but I strongly disagree, as do most who care at least a tiny bit about the game's lore aspects. To allow it to be fallen into player hands would mean that it would have to be defined into logical parameters would only demean and weaken it, reducing it to "just another legendary" since it obviously could not corrupt the player character the same way it was responsible for creating the most iconic villain in the game.

No, no, no I say. Frostmourne is unique because it is undefined and its powers a mystery to us. It belongs in the possession of the Lich King, where it maintains its power and provides us with an unforgettable gaming experience.

Return of the PTR

If you are anything like me, you have been following the 3.3 patch news with great anticipation and interest, as they have began to flood through from wow.com and mmo-champion - people hard at work data mining and exploring what is currently available in the test realms.

So far, the most interesting news have come from both Blizzard themselves, in the form a Frozen Halls info page, and mmo-champion data miners, whom have been able to discover some very interesting updates. The first and foremost of course, is the Icecrown Citadel. Anyone who has flown around it a few times realized a long time ago that it will be very expansive. The structure alone is impressive and massive.

So far we know that the citadel with not only host the new raid, with the Lich King as the final boss, but will also contain a new dungeon, with both normal and heroic version, and a total of three different wings; in order the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection. You must complete them in sequence to gain access to the last one and contain a lot of interesting new aspects.

So naturally when I saw people on general channel, looking for likeminded adventurers and explorers I just had to jump at the chance. We entered the Pit of Saron, whether or not because they had already done the first wing or if it was the only one currently enabled, I cannot say. But the first time stepping inside the citadel was very exciting. Essentially, we have two objectives; free as many slaves as possible and also kill the bosses.

The second boss Ick, which after falling to us gave up a startling revelation, Frostmourne currently resides alone, in the Halls of Reflection. Whether it will be just an event or possible a boss encounter, remains to be seen but opens the possibility that the way to defeat the Lich King is by taking away his most dangerous weapon.

Like all dungeons, normal and heroic alike, tanking the instance was heavy on the aoe side. You can switch to blood on bosses if you prefer but all and all, was a very standard issue tankwise. The bosses themselves do a lot of burst damage and had very little actual technicalities to overcome. Tyrannus at the very end had some twists to provide, but seems we encounter either a bug or another disabled feature, because once we quickly downed him, the first was suddenly over.

Why is this odd? Because Tyrannus first presents himself on the back of a frostwyrm and on such an occasion, you would expect to fight both the two-legged and four-legged counterparts. Our encounter however started with Tyrannus coming down and ended when he fell.

We had no luck investigating any possible loot because nothing was dropped, but odds are high this will change quickly, once the loot tables are finished and enabled. Mmo-champions did report an interesting set of new daily quests though, or rather, weekly quests. I managed to confirm them with the usual daily quest giver. Exactly like the old Wintergrasp quests, these can be completed only once a week, but instead provide x10 Emblems of Frost.

Also, instead of heroics, the quests are completed in raid instances. These range from Naxxramas to Ulduar and Trial of the Crusader. Basically just like the previous heroic dailies, you have to kill a boss to complete the quest. I could not locate a vendor that currently accepts the new emblems but I am prepared to speculate they have to do with new gear. A new set of tier gear?

Personally, I am voting against a new tier set. It takes our all the fun out of, the otherwise exciting gear, when you have to struggle to change it every damn patch. But time will tell. For now, will continue to follow the blogsphere and explore the PTR. Will keep my readers informed.