ICC 1st 4 Bosses at a (Slightly More Insightful) Glance

Here’s a quick rundown of the first four encounters of ICC.  Keep in mind that:

a) We’ve now cleared all 4 of them, but are still figuring out some things.

b) This is not a comprehensive rundown, just a quick overview.

c)  Good luck.  We’re all counting on you.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get some movies up pretty soon of our 1st kills.

Lord Marrowgar

This dude is big, has four heads and doesn’t afraid of anything.  He has two distinct phases.  During the first phase, the tanks will need to stack on each other to share the damage of Saber Lash. He will perform this after 10 seconds of being engaged (or 10 secs after P2 ends).  He has a huge hit box, so melee needs to be sure they are well behind him.  During P1 he will cast Bonespike Graveyard.  Everyone needs to make sure they stay spread out; ranged dps must switch to the spike and burn it down.  Throughout both phases, Marrowgar will cast Coldflame.  It is of the utmost importance to stop what you are doing and dodge these.  Even in P2, avoiding the Coldflames is more important then worrying about Bone Storm.

Speaking of which, P2 occurs every 30 seconds and consists of Marrowgar going about the room, willy-nilly, Bone Storming away.  This is an AoE attack, so any talents or abilities that mitigate damage from AoEs will work here.  Try to avoid him if you can, but really focus on staying out of the Coldflames he’ll be throwing around randomly.  After P2 is over, he will reset aggro, so a hunter’s misdirect is king.  Otherwise, dps needs to wait for the tanks to get him into position and grab a nice lead on aggro.  A rogue’s Tricks of the Trade can be dangerous as it just might result in them being the victim of a Saber Lash.

Lady Deathwhisper

There are also two phases to this fight, though they don’t rinse and repeat like Marrowgar.  In the first phase, Lady Deathwhisper will have a Mana Barrier up which will need to be burned through.  During this phase she has no aggro table and will remain stationary.  Once the Mana Barrier is down, she will become tankable and will need to be picked up by one of the tanks.  The other tank must be ready to pick her up as she will placing Touch of Insignificance on her target.   We normally swap at 3 stacks.  At this point in the fight, everyone will be on Deathwhisper, interrupting her Frostbolts, staying out of Death and Decay and avoiding the the Vengeful Shades that she summons (they do Vengeful Blast when in melee range).  Sounds easy, right?  Not so much, because P1 requires one of the most difficult things to ask for in an encounter:  coordinated dps.

Throughout P1, LD will be summoning 3 adds at a time consisting of Cult Adherents and Cult Fanatics.  When spawning from the left side, there will be two Fanatics and one Adherent.  From the right side it will be two Adherents and one Fanatic.  All physical dps must focus on Cult Adherents (the casters) and all magical dps on the Fanatics.  Sometimes when near death, the Cultist will cast Dark Martyrdom.  This will cause them to explode and turn into skeletons which will be rezzed by LD moments after.  The reanimated version will become 99% immune to physical or magical damage (fanatics and adherents, respectively), so it’s important that each type of dps stay focused on their targets.  Another thing that can happen to the Cultists is they may get empowered by LD.  She will call it out when she is doing so.  The Adherents become Empowered Adherents (looks like shadowform) and gain the ability to cast Shroud of the Occult and Deathchill Blast.  Physical dps must focus fire them immediately.  Shroud of the Occult will cause them to absorb your damage, but just keeping wailing away at them and you’ll burn through it.  The Fanatics will be turned into Transformed Fanatics (looks like a mutant).  These guys must be kited by a tank and/or hunter and burned down by magical dps.  Mages can spellsteal Vampiric Might from them as well.

Throughout this, those that can decurse should be on a lookout for Curse of Torpor, which is cast by the Adherents, as it can really fuck up just about anyones rotation.

Gunship Battle

This next fight is very different from any other encounter.  To be honest, it is not difficult at all and we would have downed it on our second attempt if I wasn’t so clumsy and hadn’t fallen off the boat to my doom.  Basically, this fight involves the raid to split into two teams:  attacking and defending.  Each team needs a tank and a healer.  Any melee should be on the attacking team.  The fight will be broken up into two repeating phases: we’ll call it the bombardment phase and the lockdown phase.

Before the battle begins, everyone will receive a rocketpack which fits in your shirt socket.  Feel free to take a few minutes to play around with them.  Be careful to not rocket yourself off the edge of the boat or get yourself stuck in the smokestacks.

Defending Team

During the bombardment phase, 2 of you will man the guns.  The guns have two abilities.  The first one does some minor damage and generates 6 to 10 “heat.”  The second button cause massive damage based of the amount of “heat” generated.  If your gun reaches 100 heat it will lock up.  So basically, you spam “1″ until you are at or over 90 “heat” then hit “2.”  That’s about it.  Once enough damage is done to the other gunship, an ally mage will freeze the guns and start the lockdown phase.  You’ll here the Muradin Bronzebeard call for the mage to freeze the cannons.

Throughout the fight,  you will be assaulted by adds boarding your boat via a portal (imo would have been cooler if they had jetpacks, too).  The defending tank should tank these away from everyone else as they do a nasty whirlwind.  They will also be placing a healing debuff on the tank.  One Major Note: The longer any add is alive, the more “experienced” they become and the more damage they do, so this creates a sort of kill order for all mobs on either boat.

Attacking Team

The attacking team will wait until the lockdown phase begins before boarding the ally ship.  The tank will want to go over first and leave last as s/he will be picking up Muradin; but dps shouldn’t bother with him.  Muradin will be stacking a buff on himself with each hit which will increase the damage he does, therefore a high avoidance tank is suggested.  All the dps should be on the mage.  Once the mage is dead, everyone GTFO.

During the bombardment phase, any range dps can take down the rifleman while they wait for the lockdown phase to begin.

Healers can heal the attacking team from their home ship if they stand near the edge, but they should be wary of the rockets shot by the (duh) rocketeers.  There will be a circle on the deck for where rockets are going to land.  The attacking team tank should drag Muradin close to the edge, just be aware of your fellow teammates as he could cleave them.

Deathbringer Saurfang

This is a fight where everyone must pay attention to their specific job.  The main gimmick of this encounter is the Blood Power that Deathbringer Saurfang will be stacking via Blood Link.  The stacks will appear as a Pink Runic Power/Rage/Mana/Energy bar (I think you get the point . . .).  It is crucial that all range find a position that is in range of DS but not closer than 12 yards to anyone else.  You’ll also want to set it up so that you have people that can slow movement on either side.  When we downed him we had Holden and Kwyj on the outsides of our setup so they could each cast slow a Blood Beast (more on that later).  The tanks will tank DS at the top of his landing with DS’s back to the raid.  Melee will stay on DS the entire time.  Range dps will spread out as far back away from DS as possible with the healers somewhere between them and the tanks, but once again not closer than 12 yards from anyone else.  Throughout the fight, whichever tank has threat will gain the Rune of Blood debuff.  It is imperative that the other tank taunts immediately as DS will heal himself with each hit on a tank afflcited with Rune of Blood.

Keep in mind that every ability DS uses will cause his Blood Power to stack.  You’ll see a red balls floating from people hit to DS with each stack.  When he hits 100 stacks, he will cast Mark of the Fallen Champion on a random raid member.  Survival cds must be used on those affected as well as massive heals until DS is dead.  Once Mark of the Fallen Champion has been cast, DS’s Blood Power will reset and he’ll return to normal size and strength.  If the marked person dies, DS will be healed, so that ain’t good.  We had a glitch occur after a wipe that caused Brewer to still have the mark when he rezzed.  Disregarding Holden’s suggestion the Brewer commit seppuku, we attempted to try him with the thought that it might reset when the fight started, but alas it did not and we wiped.  Live and learn . . .

Every so often he will use Call Blood Beast.  Because each melee hit the get off gives DS Blood Power, these bastards must be kited and killed immediately by the range dps.  Tanks will need to watch their AoE threat when these jerks spawn as having one of these nomming on your leg starts to rack up  the Blood Power. The idea is to have one person on each side aggro them and pull them back while everyone chains whatever slows and snares they might have.  If you have one of these baddies getting into range of you it is crucial to stop what you are doing and move.  Once they are down you can go back to your position.  They cannot be AoE’d due to Resistant Skin, which doesn’t matter much for 10 man as there are only 2 of them.

DS will also cast Boiling Blood, which should be just healed through, and Blood Nova which is the whole reason everyone needs to stay spread out.  At 25%, he will go into a Frenzy.  This is where things get interesting.  At this point it is a straight up dps race as you’ll have at the very least one person with Mark of the Fallen Champion and DS will be stacking Blood Power rather quickly.  Whichever tank isn’t holding aggro at the moment should be staring at the other tanks portrait, ready to taunt the second that Rune of Blood is applied.   The Blood Beast will continue to spawn and must be handled accordingly.

Well, that’s it for now.  Feel free to post comments and/or questions about any of this (or corrections, for that matter).

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