by Michael Gray
We’re talking about the very, very basics of raiding. These are the fundamental building blocks that will get you into the instance, help you kill trash and finally help you defeat the boss. Most of this stuff will seem like common sense to experienced players. That’s good news; if it’s obvious data, that means you’re already on top of the dynamic. But for others, not every aspect of raiding will be obvious, especially to players for whom WoW is their first MMO.
What is a raid?
World of Warcraft has a dynamic called a “raid group” that allows up to 40 people to join a sort of mega-party. One person is the raid leader, and any number of other people are raid assistants. It’s generally up to each individual raid to decide how it operates, in terms of leadership, loot and organization. Rest assured, there really is no “right way” to run a raid. There are some “good ways” and there are some “not as effective ways,” but no one owns the market in the One True Raiding Organization.
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by Rich Maloy
Halion, the Twilight Destroyer. Three phases, good loot and a huge scale-up in difficulty on heroic mode. It’s a good fight that requires paying attention throughout the entire 8-minute enrage timer, in which one death can mean a wipe, especially on heroic. There’s no 30 percent buff incoming, so you either learn it and beat it, or you don’t and fail. For our part, as enhancement shaman, there are a few tricks we have up our sleeves.
Positioning
Of course, for any positioning you want to follow your guild’s guidelines; never be the lone jerk running around doing his own thing. (That’s what battlegrounds are for.) The #1 rule of positioning on Halion, for both regular and heroic modes, is back foot. He has a huge parry zone that I’d estimate is nearly two-thirds his body length. Parries cause parry haste, which instantly kill tanks, which causes wipes. Wipes make raid leaders angry. Angry raid leaders make people cry. Don’t make people cry. Stand far back on his back foot and don’t force a parry; this gets dicey in phase two, but we’ll talk about that in a bit.
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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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by Michael Gray
The Blood Princes can be a difficult fight for many raids, forcing a ranged DPS to tank and for your entire raid to pitch in with handling adds. The challenge is that the Council is actuallythree different fights that swap phases according to which of the San’layn are empowered at the time.
The three Princes share a single health pool, but it doesn’t show up on all three characters at the same time. Instead, two of the vampires will be at 1 health point at any given time. Try and ignore that, even though you’ll be tempted to blow your nukiest of nukes and finish them off. The two Princes at 1 health point can not be killed or damaged — your raid will have to focus on the vampire that has the full health pool. The Darkfallen Orb is what determines which of the Princes are currently empowered; which also grants them special power boosts. The buff the Princes gain while under the effects of the Orb is titled Invocation of Blood.
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by Michael Gray
Professor Putricide is the final boss in the Plagueworks. He’s kind of the R&D guy for the Lich King’s slime armies. If you recall from fighting Rotface, Putricide is the guy who’s constantly screaming about what good news it is that the slime is working again. Frankly, I’m mostly motivated to kill the guy to get him to shut up about the slime.
Putricide is a movement fight. There’s a lot of mechanics that will require your raid to rapidly swap targets (to kill adds), and then not-stand-in-stuff. (Most of the stuff you’ll not be standing in is one variety of slime or another.) It’s not really much of a coordination fight, per se, because your tanks are probably pretty well-versed in swapping aggro back and forth. However, Putricide is going to put to the test your raid’s ability to get on an add quickly. And not stand in stuff.
Let’s take a look behind the jump and talk about the fight in more detail.
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by Michael Gray
Rotface probably has the best name in World of Warcraft. Can’t you just see a pair of elementary school kids standing out in the playground, yelling at each other? “Well, you’re a Rotface!” “Well, you’re just a Festergut!” The comparison’s pretty apt when you hear Rotface’s voice, too. And then that voice gets even better when Professor Putricide yelling, “Good news, everyone! The slime is working again!”
Rotface is the mirror twin of Festergut. I usually raid Festergut first, and then go to visit Rotface. Rotface manages to be both a DPS check and a coordination check in a single fight. This is because Rotface does things to your raid. The longer you let Rotface stack up these things, the more difficult Rotface becomes. It’s not necessarily that the damage increases as much as you’re increasing the likelihood that something will go wrong. It’s therefore best to burn him down as quickly as possible, even while trying to handle the coordination elements of the fight.
Jump behind the cut and let’s check out the fight.
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?by Michael Gray
Now that you’ve conquered the tragic hero-turned-evil Deathbringer Saurfang, the path is clear for you to go into the Plagueworks. This is where some of the slimy, funky, icky creatures serving Arthas keep their truly hideous and nasty creatures.”Slimy” really is the word here, as the whole area just seems… moist.
In a small break from normal operating procedure, I want to talk a little about the trash on the way to your first boss. The trash in Icecrown Citadel is fairly awesome, and worth a little bit of description. As soon as you enter the main spire, you’re going to find these jets of blue smoke shooting from the walls. It’s worth noting that you shouldn’t stand in them, or you’ll die. Rogues can disarm these traps fairly handily.
Jump behind the cut and let’s start looking at Festergut and his wonderful array of friends.
As you enter the spire past the green jets of death, the first mobs you’ll see flying around the central spire are the Val’kyr Heralds. The Heralds themselves aren’t so bad to kill, but they have a trick that can send your groups into apoplexy. As the fight against each Herald proceeds, they will drop a Severed Essence on members of the raid. That ability creates a Severed Essence mob — a duplicate of one of your raid members. The longer the fight against each Herald continues, the more Severed Essences you’ll have to fight. It’s probably best to have your off-tank pick up these additional mobs, while you focus on burning down the Herald. Then go back and clean up the Essences at your leisure. The jets and the val’kyr are not actually Plagueworks trash, but you’ll have to deal with them on your way there.
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by Michael Gray
Deathbringer Saurfang is the final boss of The Lower Spire of Icecrown Citadel. This is the orc you once knew as Dranosh Saurfang. It turns out that the orc affectionately known as “Little Cleave” didn’t simply die at Wrathgate. Instead, while we weren’t looking, some ill-mannered Scourge grabbed the body of Dranosh Saurfang and spirited away. We probably assumed that his body had been burned to ash when the red dragons torched the place. Still, however it happened, you’ve now ascended to the opening of the Plagueworks, and now have to show down with Deathbringer Saurfang.
The Saurfang fight is pretty interesting, actually. There’s a lot of moving parts and abilities to try and monitor, but the actual flow of the fight isn’t too bad. From a tank’s perspective, you stand there and taunt every so often. From a healer’s perspective, you’re healing . . . and then healing some more. It’s the DPS players who really need to be on their game. There’s adds that show up which they have to kite and kill in short order, or really horrible things start happening to the raid.
Let’s take a look behind the cut and start talking about all the horrible things that could happen.
Like I said, the basic flow of the fight is pretty simple. You’ll want your tanks to stand up by the dais where Saurfang starts out. He’ll chat and blab for a little while, giving your raid ample time to stand there. And stand there. And stand there some more. Maybe knit a scarf or something while the two Saurfangs chat it out.
If you’ve got some Death Knights who’re jonesing to bust out an Army of the Dead at the opening, have them do it when Saurfang unleashes his Force Choke — using that a timing point, the Army ghouls will probably die before Blood Beasts start showing up. You definitely want them gone before the Blood Beasts, but we’ll explain why in a moment.
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by Michael Gray
While you might choose your profession based on its character bonuses, it’s still best to know what items will sell on the AH from each.
Gathering Professions: Herbalism, Mining, Skinning
All three gathering professions are very powerful for producing saleable product for the Auction House. Selling the raw materials gathered with these skills will fuel the items required for raiders to punch down Icecrown Citadel, or even casual players who want to make sure their characters are at the pinnacle of their personal progression.
Herbalism’s big-sell item is the Frost Lotus. The Frost Lotus is the cornerstone reagent for creating Flasks of Endless Rage and Flasks of the Frost Wyrm, two of the most popular items on the Auction House. Even Herbalist/Alchemists will probably buy the occasional Frost Lotus stacks if they find themselves without time to farm. Your Frost Lotus should sell fairly quickly from the Auction House, assuming you’ve got them reasonably priced. The down side of the Frost Lotus is that it drops at random from any Northrend herb. It’s hard to farm these on purpose.
The other benefit to Herbalism is that there are two crafting professions which are fed by the skill. Both Alchemists and practitioners of Inscription will need herbs to produce their final product. You’ll not only pick up cash from people who need flasks, but you’ll also sell to people who are trying to advance these skills.
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