by Matt Low
Welcome to the end boss. It is possible to heal through Arthas with a less than ideal composition — my first kill with 25 players was done without the presence of any holy paladins. If your guild is still struggling with it and the issue might be from the healing side of things, maybe I can help you out here with some additional pointers.
I hope you’re familiar with the general encounter mechanics and the strategy as outlined. I’m just going to stick to addressing any aspects that will affect you directly as the healer.
Phase 1
Put one healer on each tank, and the rest can raid heal. You can float a third healer on both tanks.
Infest You’ll be facing this spell for most of the encounter. Personally, I chose to have that covered by a discipline priest and a holy priest. A discipline priest gives you an extra edge by preemptively casting Power Word: Shield on specific players. If possible, assign specific groups for each priest to cover. Any players who stand in close proximity to each other for most of the encounter (such as a melee group or a healer group) should be assigned to the holy priest. Once everything is assigned, what will happen is Arthas will cast Infest, and players who have been shielded will see it fall off. Any remaining players with Infest can be rapidly covered by that holy priest, between Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing.
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by Christian Belt
This week, regardless of the path you’ve taken to get there, I’m going to assume that you’ve been industrious and spent a significant amount of time gearing through drops and collecting emblems in those random heroics. Here’s the general road you should be following …
- Get all the drops you want/need from normal Trial of the Champion.
- Grind random heroics until your eyes bleed, gathering any upgrades from the boss drops and soaking up emblems like a giant, super-absorbant mage sponge. Before anyone in the comments comes up with it, I’m going to throw my new least-favorite nickname out for you: Spongemage Magicpants. Just like the cartoon that inspires the name, my columns are funnier when you’re high. Or when you’re 5. Either way.
- Remember to gem and enchant any upgrades that seem like they might last you a while. If funding is an issue, seek less expensive alternatives, but don’t simply eschew gems and enchants. Doing so cripples your potential.
- One thing a large number of you mentioned that I neglected to put in last week’s part 1 was PvP gear, and I have to agree with you. If PvP appeals to you at all, the PvP gear available can provide massive upgrades for you fairly quickly. Head into Wintergrasp, do a few dailies and hit a few random battlegrounds, and you’ll have enough honor to buy a piece or two of very high-level PvP gear that can also double as perfectly serviceable dungeon-running garb.
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by Dawn Moore
Before you can benefit from this guide, you will need to familiarize yourself with the Lich King encounter and have a basic idea how the fight works. There are plenty of online resources. Make sure you’re read up on the abilities and timers of each phase.
I will be approaching the fight from a 25-man angle, then at the end making some notes about 10-man. A lot of my advice is tailored around the hard mode version of the fight, but you can apply the same logic to the normal mode (although in a more relaxed way) and still find success.
Your role
Discipline Your job above all things is to shield as many players as you can from the Infest. To do this, you’ll need to start casting Power Word: Shield on groups about 15 seconds before entering combat. When Infest is cast on the raid, you should see all the shields on your raid frame be completely absorbed, then you can start shielding those same groups over again. Don’t get caught up casting heals or you risk falling behind on your shield targets, which can result in deaths from Infest.
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by Joe Perez
This week, we are going to play with some vampires. Now these vampires do not sparkle, but they can still be quite annoying. These are the San’layn, a subsection of the Darkfallen, and the Crimson Halls is where their leadership calls home. There have been several seen throughout the history Azeroth and they are quite instrumental in overseeing the Scourge’s operations. In the halls we get to face three princes and their dark queen.
As before, this is not an end all, be all guide. These are simply my opinions and thoughts on these bosses. There are several ways to do them, and I encourage you to find ones that work for you.
So let us take a look, shall we?
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by Joe Perez
This week, your sights are firmly set on the next challenge. The next stop on your journey will take you into the citadel’s plague wing. Don’t let the name fool you; this is no Naxxramas. As before, this is not a complete raid strategy, just some tips and tricks for the restoration shaman heading into the breach.
The Plagueworks has everything you need to make you feel at home: vile gas and slime, a plethora of ghoulish playmates, even a couple puppies to keep you company. This wing of the citadel is devoted to the creation of the Lich King’s various plagues and carrion creatures as well as where all the various constructs and flesh-crafting research is done. You’ve seen what the plagues have done in the past; now it’s time to stop them from wiping out all life on Azeroth with their vile concoctions!
Festergut
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by Joe Perez
Today I’d like to focus on the current content again and begin talking about making your way through ICC as a restoration shaman. This will not be an all-out strategy guide, as there are many of those already around. Instead this is going to be specific tips and tricks for the encounters you will face and each unique challenge ahead of you and your raid. This will not just focus on 25 man content, but will be things you can use for both 10 and 25 man content. Heroic will be it’s own animal for another time.
So you’ve gathered your gear, plowed through heroics and early raids to get your feet wet. You’ve set up your user interface and your addons and macros to exactly as you like them, and you are ready to begin your ascent towards the frozen throne at the crown of Azeroth.
As you step forth on a mission to cleanse the world of one of the greatest evils it has ever known, you have to start somewhere, right?
Your stop is The Lower Spire. The vanguard of the Lich King’s forces stands ready to repel you from the inner workings of their master’s lair. They stand to offer challenge to those who wish to trespass! You are not without abilities of your own to push past this group of villains.
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?by Daniel Whitcomb
As with similar loot guides, I’m going to shy away from covering loot that is not specifically itemized for death knights. That means that I will not be covering things that have attack power (with the exception of certain weapons), things that have shield block stats, or weapons that have quick attack speeds. There is, of course, a possibility that something that fulfills one of the three previous parameters will be an upgrade for you anyway, it is true, but between the new stat changes coming with Cataclysm and the fact you’ll eventually upgrade a lot of this stuff with emblem gear, I feel it’s best to focus on the stuff that has the biggest chance of keeping you well equipped for a while.
Forge of Souls
Normal
Legplates of Frozen Granite drop off Bronjahm in Normal mode. A Beginning tank should definitely not underestimate the hit on these babies. If you’re still learning how to keep a tank rotation going or just need to keep aggro against better equipped DPS, you’ll want some extra +hit so you can hit with Dark Command when you lose aggro.
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by Matt Low
Sindragosa is easily the most agonizing boss in the entire instance. I personally thought Professor Putricide was bad but once I got to her chamber and started several attempts, my faith in myself was shattered. One of the big frustrations is that a player who is lagging or disconnecting can easily be the cause of a wipe. Sindragosa is not forgiving at all. You’ll find her after you clear out the Nerubian trash room that’s protecting her.
Why she needs a bunch of undead spiders to act as her guardians, I will never know. Don’t forget to activate the teleporter when you run into the area (It’s on the left side when you enter). Once you’ve cleared out the whelps and the two mini-dragons in front, Sindragosa will come charging in. However, you can immediately run back through to the Nerubian trash room to get properly set up since she’ll despawn. She’ll reset allowing everyone to drink up and rebuff if necessary.
Again, this article is aimed directly for healers who might be suffering from various parts of the encounter or are just looking for tips to get by. Start off with six healers and plead with your tanks to pick up some frost resistance gear. It helps a ton against her Frost Breath.
Phase 1
As most dragon encounters go in the game, this happens to be her ground phase. There are a few things to be careful of.
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by Allison Robert
With the upcoming Icecrown raid buffs going all the way to 30% damage/healing/health/absorbs eventually, more and more raids are going to find their way to Arthas. Buffs aside, a lot of Arthas’ difficulty lies in execution, and I started jotting down a few notes that I hope might be helpful to other druids likely to attempt the fight. We were fortunate to get both the 10- and 25-man version down, and I got astoundingly lucky on one 10-man attempt with back-to-back selections as a Harvest Soul target while I was running a video capture. I’ve seen a lot of comments online that caster druids aren’t well-suited to dealing with this, and that’s just not true at all.
Sweat the small stuff.
As with other elaborate, multi-phase boss fights, it’s the small stuff that’s going to kill you — over and over again until people get it right. The need to get a lot of “little things” right over a lengthy boss fight (I think our 25-man kill clocked in at around 17-18 minutes) is a big part of the difficulty, and odds are good that you will die to a number of infuriatingly tiny mistakes.
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