by Zuggy

The second boss in the first wing of the Icecrown Citadel dungeon is Lady Deathwhisper. This is a bloody battle because she spawns more adds about once a minute. Tanks also won’t do much good against Lady Deathwhisper.

Lady Deathwhisper stats:

• HP – 3,000,000 – 13,400,000
• Mana – 3,300,000 – 14,000,000
  

Lady Deathwhisper Boss Abilities

Mana Barrier

• Automatically replenishes Lady Deathwhisper’s health, taking from her mana to do so

Animate Dead

• Reanimates cult adherent or cult fanatic
• Usually raises three of each kind once per minute

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by Fox Van Allen

If you got left behind in the last patch or even if you’re a newly minted level 80, don’t worry — you can catch up quick. Here’s how.The release of every major patch coincides with a soft gear reset. Every random heroic dungeon you run earns you a slew of Emblems of Triumph, redeemable for level 245 epic gear, the same quality of items that drop from the 25-man version of Trial of the Crusader. You can also buy tier 9 armor, which come with desirable multi-piece bonuses.

If you’re starting from scratch, your first order of business should be to put together a two-piece tier set. The easiest and quickest route is to pick up Velen’s Handwraps of Conquest and Velen’s Mantle of Conquest, each of which cost 30 emblems. The two-piece tier 9 bonus, a longer lasting Vampiric Touch, is especially friendly to newer players who have trouble juggling their DoTs.

When putting together the rest of your Icecrown-ready gear set, keep the basics in mind. The shadow priest hit cap is 289, so aim to get your hit rating as close to that number as possible (for Draenei, the hit cap is 263). Spellpower is the best stat for shadow priests, but haste is very close behind. Critical strike rating is our third best stat, making gear with all three ideal. Continue enchanting for spellpower if you can.

Head
Those who need a new, “grindable” helmet should take a look at the Helm of Clouded Sight, available for 75 emblems. Fill that yellow gem slot with a Reckless Ametrine, which is the new yellow gem slot filler of choice for shadow priests. The meta gem of choice remains the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond — make sure you have at least two Purified Dreadstones on hand to activate the meta bonus.
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by Zuggy

The first boss you’ll face in the Icecrown Citadel dungeon is Lord Marrowgar.  He guards the Frozen Throne in the Lower Spire.  There are two main things to remember when battling this boss.  First, don’t stand in the fire he shoots across the floor.  Second, when he starts to spin, run as far away from him as you can.

Lord Marrowgar Boss Abilities

Lord Marrogar: 7,000,000 – 23,700,000 hit points

Bone Storm

• 8,000-800 damage, depending on how far away you are from Lord Marrowgar.  The closer you are, the more damage you’ll take.
• Physical damage
• 3 second cast time
• Heroic mode adds a bleed effect

Bone Spike Graveyard

• Damages 10 percent of your health per second
• Physical damage
• Impales any player it hits
• Lasts 5 minutes
• 3 second cast time

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by Zuggy

Halls of Reflection is the third and final in the series of 5-man instances inside Icecrown Citadel. This dungeon is the Lich King’s inner sanctum, and it’s here you’ll finally meet with the Lich King… sort of.  There are three bosses in this 5-man instance.

Falric Boss Strategy Guide

Falric: 377,000 – 633,000 hit points

Falric is the first of the three bosses in Halls of Reflection.  The battle begins with about four or five waves of various ghost mobs, with Falric becoming active after the fourth or fifth one.  The number of ghosts in the mob increases with each wave.  The important thing to remember about the ghosts is that anyone standing near them when they spawn can draw aggro, so it’s best to keep your healer and ranged DPS bunched in a corner or the entrance with the tank nearby.  Paladins will have a field day with all these ghost mobs, so it’s handy to have one along for the instance.  Always target the healers in these pre-fight trash mobs first.

Falric Boss Abilities

Ghostly Adds, summoned pre-fight

• Ghostly Priest: Shadow Word: Pain, Circle of Destruction, Cower in Fear, Dark Mending
• Phantom Mage: Fireball, Frostbolt, Chains of Ice, Flamestrike
• Phantom Hallucination: Summoned by Phantom Mage, uses same abilities, except it explodes when you kill it.
• Shadowy Mercenary (rogue): Deadly Poison, Poisoned Daggers
• Spectral Footman (warrior): Shield Bash, Enrage
• Tortured Rifleman (hunter): Ice Shot, Cursed Arrow, Frost Traps

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by Gregg Reece

This week we’re delving into the Crimson Halls. This is the vampire wing of the citadel and they’re kicking it up in style. There are the pretty-boy vampires complete with glitter as well as the vampire vixen leading them. If only Buffy Summers were in my guild, this place would be cake. However, she’d probably end up in love with one of the blood princes and then they’d become good guys for a while which makes us start to care about them only to find out that it was all an elaborate ploy to trick the slayer into a ritual to turn the high school into a demonic portal to hell. Wait, I think I’ve actually seen that one.

The Blood Princes three

Kite the orb of fire, kill the bomb, and let the hunter tank the shadow guy. Wait, didn’t we kill some of these guys already? And did he just use glitter on me? Ack! They’re Twilight vampires! Let’s stake them and see what they bought with their movie deal money.

• Holy
  • Heartsick Mender’s Cape – 10 man – Cloak upgrade time. We’ve got a red socket and it bumps up our haste as well as mp5.
  • Cerise Coiled Ring – 10 man – This ring has a bit more intellect than stamina, which is always good in my opinion. It has a red gem slot and has crit and haste with the lion’s share of the itemization going to crit.
  • Mail of Crimson Coins – 25 man – If you don’t have a resto/elemental shaman in your raid, you could probably swipe this chest piece. It has three gem sockets (red, yellow, and blue)with the equip stats as haste and mana per five. It actually has quite a bit of mp5 if you’re looking for that.
  • Crypt Keeper’s Bracers – 25 man – These are a pair of crit and haste bracers. They’ve also got a yellow gem slot you could toss an intellect gem into.
  • Incarnadine Band of Mending – 25 man – This ring is awaiting a blue gem of your choice (or a completely different gem if you’re so inclined). Its other stats are crit and mp5 with the itemization lean towards mp5.
• Protection
  • Spaulders of the Blood Princes – 10 man – These plate shoulders have a significant amount of health available to them. It’s leaning very very heavily towards stamina over strength at almost two to one ratio. It also has two blue gem sockets on them which you could load up with stamina gems. Other things which aren’t stamina include a bunch of defense rating, some parry, and some hit. However, you get these purely for the health pool bump. Don’t forget to go grab your shoulder enchants from those Hodir boys.
  • Royal Crimson Cloak – 25 man – This is a pretty universal tanking cloak. It has a bunch of stamina, defense and dodge rating in equal parts as well as a little bit of hit. It also has a yellow gem slot as well.
  • Taldaram’s Plated Fists – 25 man – These gauntlets aren’t as heavily stacked towards stamina as other items we’ve been looking at, but stamina is still at an advantage. There are two gem slots colored in red and blue. The defense rating and parry rating seem to be the main stats on here, but it also has a decent amount of dodge rating as well to help you get out of that Icecrown radiance funk.
• Retribution
  • Battle-Maiden’s Legguards – 10 man – This set of legs has three gem slots in them (two red and one yellow). It’s got a lot of haste on it as well as a large chunk of expertise. With the amount of strength you can shove into three gem slots, I’m not complaining.
  • Thrice Fanged Signet – 10 man – This crit and haste ring is fairly decent for ten man. You’ve also got a red gem slot in it for an additional Bold Cardinal Ruby.
  • Landsoul’s Horned Greathelm – 25 man – It’s a pretty simple helm, but includes large chunks of both crit and hit. It has a meta slot as well as an additional yellow gem socket.
  • Cryptmaker – 25 man – While not Bryntoll or Shadowmourne, it is a pretty decent two-handed mace. It’s nice and slow giving you a bit more power in your swings as well as having some hit rating to make sure you actually connect (but you’re already hit capped, right?). The armor penetration isn’t all that important unless you’re getting a lot of procs out of your tier 10 set bonus, but can be handy in that case.

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by Zuggy

The second wing of the Icecrown Citadel dungeon is the Pit of Saron.  It’s a large open area with mobs scattered all around.  There are three bosses in this 5-man instance: Forgemaster Garfrost, Krick and Ick, and Scourgelord Tyrannus.  You must have beaten the Forge of Souls instance before you can gain access to the Pit of Saron.

Here’s a quick Pit of Saron instance strategy guide.

Pit of Saron Boss Strategy Tactics: Forgemaster Garfrost

The first boss to beat in the Pit of Saron instance is Forgemaster Garfrost.  His abilities are mostly frost-based, so use any extra frost resistance abilities or items you have.  The battle against Forgemaster Garfrost comes in three phases, and he uses different abilities in each of the three phases.

Forgemaster Garfrost Boss Abilities

Forgemaster Garfrost: 499,000 – 647,000 hit points

Permafrost

• 200 damage
• Frost damage
• Instant cast
• Stacks 30 times
• 200 yard radius

Throw Saronite

• 3,500-5,500 damage
• Physical damage
• Knockback
• 150 yard range
• 2 second cast

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by Zuggy

Forge of Souls is the first wing of the new Icecrown Citadel instance in patch 3.3.  It’s home to two bosses: Bronjahm and the Devourer of Souls.  Forge of Souls is a five-man instance.  Here’s a quick Forge of Souls instance strategy guide to send you on your way.

Forge of Souls Instance Strategy Guide: Bronjahm

You’ve got to beat Bronjahm first in the Forge of Souls instance.  One thing to keep in mind is that Bronjahm fears your party members, but only while he’s casting Soulstorm a spell that can be deadly if you’re standing in the wrong place.

Here’s a quick instance strategy guide for Bronjahm.

Bronjahm Abilities

Magic’s Bane

• 2,500 damage + damage in the amount of half your total mana, up to 10,000
• Physical damage
• Instant Cast
• 28 yard radius

Corrupt Soul

• 50,000 yard range
• Separates you from your body
• Instant Cast
• Lasts 4 seconds
• Spawns a Corrupted Soul Fragment

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by Allison Robert

Titles; they are cool, they are wonderful, and in a not-inconsiderable number of cases, they are very hard to get. Almost without exception, every single title in the game is also linked to an achievement. Today we’re going to examine how you can get (or, in some cases, how it was possible to get) about half of the 19 titles currently available from dungeons and raids.

If you’re a skimmer, the two toughest achievements are actually at the tail end this week, and if you’re currently in Icecrown Citadel, there’s two currently-unobtainable titles that may interest you here (in addition to another set next week).

Argent Defender (requires A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity under special conditions)

Getting Argent Defender requires you to do Trial of the Grand Crusader on 10-man without padding the difficulty with 25-man gear. But that’s kind of misleading, due to the interaction of the 10-man and 25-man loot system in Tier 9. With Trophies of the Crusade available to both ToGC-10 and ToC-25, someone who’s been running ToGC-10 exclusively can wind up with a gear set that’s almost indistinguishable from (and in some cases, better than) a ToC-25 geared player.

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by Brian Wood

We hunters are a misunderstood class in so many ways. Other classes don’t understand how our bond with our pets reaches beyond logic and min-maxing. They don’t understand that though our class is insanely easy to solo and level with, we are one of the most difficult ranged DPS classes to play well in raids. They don’t understand that we’re just, well, cooler than them.

But we’re not here today to discuss the mental failings of other classes. We are here to discuss some of the hunter abilities most commonly misunderstood by hunters themselves. Sometimes the problem is the convoluted WoW tooltips that seem deliberately designed to confuse readers. Sometimes our abilities have interesting mechanics that aren’t reflected in the tooltips at all, and of course sometimes people just plain misread abilities.

Join me after the cut as we take a look at the three abilities most commonly misunderstood by hunters and explain how they really work. Not a week goes by that I don’t get at least one email or comment about every one of these abilities.

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