TotC 10 --> Icecrown

Apollux

New Member
I've been seeing rumors that Patch 3.3 (Icecrown) will drop tomorrow. There are a few server issues to be worked out, but otherwise it is G2G. If that's the case, I will most likely be moving my Ony 10/TotCrusader 10 to Icecrown. Icecrown will debut with just one wing open (four bosses?) and more wings/quarters should open each week.

The run time is up on GEM for this Friday, Dec. 11th. Regulars will get priority on raid spots and sign up (regretfully) is not guarantee of a spot. Just keep an eye out and be ready for some major server issues tomorrow (if the patch drops). :(

Don't forget that with the new patch, we'll get some new 5mans that drop iLvl 232 items. I would expect them to be a step up in difficulty from TotChampion Heroic...
 
I believe Rhys is right, although I don't know what the schedule is.
"The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. Progress beyond that point will be prevented for several weeks. Then the Plagueworks will open with Rotface, Festergut, and Professor Putricide becoming available. After another period of time, the Crimson Hall will open and you can then fight the Blood Princes and Blood-Queen Lana'thel. The final Frostwing Halls unlock then occurs after that, making Valithria Dreamwalker, Sindragosa, and the Lich King available. We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace."

We have a few regulars out for this Friday (the 11th) so I am undecided as to whether or not we'll pay a visit to Lord Marrowgar and his friends. If not, TotCrusader 10 will be the raiding venue. However, we'll definitely be running Icecrown Citadel on the 18th and most likely run on the 26th and 2nd of Jan instead of raiding on Christmas (Friday the 25th & New Year's). :p
 
Hmmmm, I'm not real sure what my availability will be. I know I will be gone from the 19th and driving back on the 26th. I might be back in time but it is a 7 - 8 hour drive so it depends on when I leave. The 18th and 2nd looks good at the moment.
 
Yeah,
So there happens to be some big nasties that interrupt heals/casts & cleave... We got two of them in tandem and sufferred many wipes. It was rather disheartening. However it's kind of fun to be somewhat clueless in a raid and have to develop tactics on the fly again.
After an hour or so we slinked back to TotCrusader for a relatively quick clear. Back to ICC on the 18th with lessons learned. :D
 
I didn't find it disheartening (except that I came into the raid with 2silver to my name and had to borrow bucks for repairs). I LOVE learning new fights and trying to figure out how to outsmart the bad guys..I guess 10 deaths was enough though :D
 
*sigh* I had a nice long post of suggestions typed out, and then accidentally clicked the "back" button on my mouse. I'll type it out again later today...
 
Deathbound Wards & Other ICC Trash

Apollux /casts uber-long wall of text:

The Rings from Ashen Verdict (Friendly-Exalted) are insane and should probably be utitlised by everyone, so here's a quick guide on farming the rep.

This guide is for 10man Icecrown Citadel normal mode.

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Raid Setup:

1 x Tank (Preferably well geared, totc25 normal tank gear.)
2 x Healer (Any healbots are good enough)
7 x Random DPS. (Try to maximise your AoE, my group used 3 Mages 3 Rogues and a Warlock.)

Mobs:

The Damned - Level 80 Elite mobs with 478k health.
These mobs are just like insects, don't do any real damage but are just there in abundance. When they die they explode for 10k health so try to keep everyone topped and melee watch yourself when AoE'ing.

Servant of the Throne - Level 80 Elite mobs with 378k health.
These mobs appear in nearly every pack, do nothing special but cast a Glacial Bolt that hits for a considerable amount of damage.

Ancient Skeletal Soldier - Level 80 Elite mob with 315k health.
Nothing special, tank and spank mobs. Might have a cleave that hits for 12k but I'm not positive.

Nerub'ar Broodkeeper - Level 80 Elite mobs with 315k health.
Again nothing special, just sit there spitting out scarabs that hit for 3.5k each. These cast a spell called 'Dark Mending' which should ideally be interupted.

Deathbound Ward - Level 82 Elite mobs with 1,685k health.
These are the hardest mobs in the trash zone and are optional (if you have a Rogue). There are four traps scattered across the 2 rooms of trash (2 in each room) which can be de-activated by a stealth Rogue or can be activated by anyone to spawn these.

Strategy:

First Pull - 5 x The Damned

There are two 'The Damned' mobs guarding the entrance to the first trash room and a group of three 'The Damned' mobs patroling inside the room. Pull this pack and the patroling pack inside at the same time, and drag them to the guards. The guards and your AoE will kill this pack in around 15 seconds. Don't worry if you pull one of the side packs on the left and right because they reset at the entrance of the room.

Bottom Left and Right Packs
4 x The Damned
1 x Servent

These two pulls are simple; have your tank run in and aggro the 'Servent of the Throne' while everyone nukes it. Use stuns, kicks, counter-spells etc to interupt it's Glacial Bolt and it'll die without harm. Then proceed to AoE 'The Damned' pack of four mobs which your tank should have aggro on.
Do not try pulling these to the guards as they will reset.

Middle Pack
1 x Servent
2 x Nerub'ar
2 x Ancient Soldier

Have your tank run in and aggro this pack and use the same strategy as above on the 'Servent of the Throne'. Lock it down and kill it asap. Once this is dead proceed to AoE the other 4 mobs while watching for heals from the 'Nerud'ar Broodkeeper'.

Top Left and Right Packs
1 x Nerub'ar
4 x The Damned

Same strategy as the bottom left and right packs, but this time you want to kill the Nerub'ar first and proceed to AoE 'The Damned' mobs.

Second Room Entrance Pack
2 x Nerub'ar
2 x Servent

Have seperate lockdowns for the Servents and leave the Nerub'ars be. Have your tank tank all of them paying attention to heal casts and glacial bolts. Have a DPS order for the four mobs, rather than AoE'ing this pack.

Second Room Pack
2 x Servent
2 x Nerub'ar
2 x Ancient Soldier

Same as the pack above but this time with 2 Ancient Soldiers with them. Pull this pack with a ranged and have the tank LoS behind the first room wall. Pull them to the first room and deal with them there; because traps can be set off in that room which will spawn Wards and require a reset.

Deathbound Ward:

These guys are the trickiest as they are like mini-bosses. There are four of these per reset, and have to be activated by traps. They can be skipped if you do not want to kill them (though they are worth the most rep(75)).

Have your Rogues scout the first room for the traps. When they find the traps they should activate them by standing on them, which will then cause them to be slowed by 90% movement speed (a debuff they should cloak) and then vanish if they pulled a pack. Once the trap(s) have been activated you should wait at the entrance of the room for the Ward to patrol the room, and pull him to the entrance (not outside it) to kill him.

He does a LOT of damage which will require spam heals from both your healers. He does an instant-cleave every 1 or 2 seconds which means no-one at all should be infront of him except the tank. Melee should not move in to hit him until the tank has him stationary and a tank spot set.

He does a 'Disrupting Shout' which interupts any cast you are currently casting so healers and casters should watch out for when that is cast (once every ten seconds or so) and try not to cast anything during it.

This mob is disarmable, very recommended.

Again if you don't want to kill this mob you should have a Rogue de-activate the trap.

Reputation:
The invading mobs at the start 'The Damned' are worth zero reputation so should be ignored when possible; they stop invading after you kill the first pack. All mobs in this instance are worth between 15 to 75 reputation (with 'The Damned' being worth 15 and 'Deathbone Ward' being worth 75).

Per run you can expect to get between 850 and 900 reputation depending on the circumstances. Your reputation per run is significantly decreased if you skip the 'Deathbone Ward' mobs.

Alternatively, all mobs are kite-able inside there (Except the Deathbone Ward) so you can have a team of Mages work together and farm reputation that way (slowly but surely!).
 
Bob had asked me to share some of my experiences in ICC, so here goes!

Overall, I think that ICC 10 is close to the difficulty of ToGC 10. With the ready availability of Emblems of Triumph, this will change as the average gear level of the populance increases, but for now I think the comparison works. At least two of the boss fights so far depend on the raid being able to switch targets quickly and "get out of the fire", and that adds a level of complexity.

(I'm assuming that you have watched videos/read wowwiki, and so I will only mention things that I noticed as I was healing, or that are important.)

Trash:
- Marrowgar: The "big" thing here is the Bone Giants (or whatever they're actually called). These seem to be activated by traps of some kind on the floor. They tend to path around a bunch before engaging the raid, so you have some time to kill any other trash before you have to face them. They are non-tauntable, and have a nasty cleave, so be sure a tank gets to them first and points them away from the raid. They also have an unfair aoe stun that also interrupts/locks out casters. There really isn't any warning that the stun is coming, you just have to deal with it. You may be able to have your healers outrange or Line of Sight it, but I haven't tried. We wiped on that 6-pull when two giants activated and joined in the fun. I think you might have to do a pet pull on that room.

The other thing to note is the line of ice spikes that the undead casters use. This does about 12k damage to anyone standing on them, and so it important to get away from these, as topping off people damaged by these just adds more to the healers' already full plate.

- Lady Deathwhisper: There's a couple groups of cultists in the room before the Lady, and two High Priests. The cultists are nothing special, altho one of them drops a void zone when it dies, and sometimes seems to resurrect itself.

The High Priests have some kind of continual damage aura, as well as making a random raid member a "bomb". A challenge to heal, make sure your healers are prepared.

- Gunship Battle: Nothing really special about the trash here.


Marrowgar:
Lord Receptionist serves his purpose as gatekeeper well. He is a good raid check boss, making sure that you are prepared for the challenges ahead. Out of the four bosses, I think that he hits the tanks the hardest.
- It is important that the two tanks stay together at all times. We marked them up so that they could always find each other. A tank taking a full Saber Lash is going to die.
- This also means that you need to keep the two tanks alive. This fight requires strong healing, as both tanks are going to be taking a LOT of damage from Saber Lash. Healers are also going to get Bone Spiked, and you must prepare for this. If you run with 3 healers, this shouldn't be a problem, but if you run with only two healers, have one of your hybrid dps toss some healing on the tanks while the rest of the raid frees the Spiked healer.
- This fight is an endurance fight, not a dps race. As long as people are staying out of fires and switching to burn down Bone Spikes quickly, you should win.


Lady Deathwhisper:
Pretty easy fight. Just a few things to watch for:
- Viper Sting for the win. This will drain the Phase 1 shield quickly, and your Hunter will never run out of mana.
- Make sure you have a Frostbolt interrupting rotation set up for Phase 2. The Lady will cast these frequently and they do about 30000 damage. You don't want the tank taking these.
- During Phase 2, the Lady will summon tiny ghosts. They are pretty hard to see, but you can tell she's summoning one when she spits out a pink arc of energy to a random spot on the floor about 15 yards or so from her. The ghost will chase a random person and blow up for a lot of damage when they catch them. They can't be targeted, you just have to run away.


Gunship Battle:
This took us a few tries to get the pattern down, but once you do it's a snoozer.
- Make sure everyone gets a Rocket Pack from the Goblin next to Bronzebeard. The pack goes in your shirt slot.
- Divide the raid into two groups: a Bridge Crew, and an Away Team. Each group needs a Tank, DPS, and a healer.
- Two of the Bridge Crew dps takes the Cannons. Everyone else kills anything that comes over to your ship.
- When the enemy mage comes out and freezes your Cannons, the Away Team leaps over to the other ship. The tank keeps Saurfang busy (ours just used the rocket pack to leap around the enemy ship, keeping Saurfang chasing him the whole time), while the DPS burns the Mage down. Once the mage is dead, the Away Team returns to your ship. The key to this fight is minimizing the time your cannons are frozen.
- You don't want the Away Team to stay on the enemy ship too long, as Saurfang gains a stacking buff the longer you are on the enemy ship and will eventually start doing a LOT of damage to the Away Team tank.
- The Bridge Crew Gunners should focus on killing as many of the NPCs on the enemy ship as they can. This both reduces the damage that your ship is going to take, and makes sure the Away Team can focus entirely on the Mage.
Rinse, repeat, loot. Very easy fight once you get the rhythm down.


Saurfang:
The difficulty of this encounter depends entirely on your raid's ability to kill the Blood Beasts quickly, and doing so without taking damage from them. Saurfang doesn't hit the tanks hard (compared to Marrowgar), but he does do a lot of damage to the raid.
- Saurfang puts a curse on the tank called Rune of Blood. Whenever he hits this target, he will heal for a large amount, so unless you have very good dps, you will want to switch to a different tank until this curse wears off.
- Mark of the Champion persists through death, and so depending on how the fight is going, and the contribution that the dead player could be making, you may not want to resurrect them.
- As the fight goes on, Saurfang leeches more and more health from the raid making the last 15% of his health difficult to burn through. The amount of damage the raid is taking also increases as the fight goes on. For these reasons, I would recommend saving heroism (if you have it) to help burn through this last bit of health.
 
for range dps I can say u need to watch where u at, at all times need to watch what mobs are around where the bosses moves are going, what is going on with adds. yes this sounds like we should know it, but truth is that as a dps on a boss like marrgow and saurfang u are moving nonstop, so u got to watch u dont run and get hit by something or u pull the boss cause u doa instance move 1 inch form him.
 
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