Ice Cream Social: Blood Prince Council

Blood Prince Council, AKA Twilight Sparkle Party 

being dead = photo opportunities

 

Tanks 

This is a 3 tank fight-even in 10 man.  Valanar and Taldaram (henceforce, Val and Tal) should be tanked by normal tanks.  Keleseth can be tanked by anyone with a ranged attack.  In 25s we stick our paladin on him because, well, in 25s we have 3 tanks. 

The Kel tank is going to be wandering around the room trying to pick up those floaty purple-blue orbs.  Invariably some DPS happy schmuck with AoE is going to pick up one or two, but you should yell at them and then grab all the rest.  

 

The orbs reduce the shadow damage you take, which is very important because all Kel fucking does is chuck shadow bolts.  They follow the last person to hit it, and don’t have a real aggro table.  They do fade after awhile, so you’ll pretty much be wandering around seeking more perpetually.  Try not to run through half of your raid while empowered shock wave is incoming, okay? 

The Val and Tal tanks have an easier job.  Stand there and tank shit.  In our 25s the Val tank (I think) is actually up against a far wall, allowing them and their healer to stay out of the way whenever their boss isn’t the focus.   This way there’s less screaming “stay the fuck away from me during fucking empowered vortex you fucking useless fuckwits!” at their screens.  

DPS 

Okay, I’m about to explain a very difficult concept, so pay attention.  

Stay the fuck away from each other (except for when you all need to NOT stay the fuck away from each other). 

Got it?  No?  Okay.  Basically, you need to stay 12 yards away from every fucking one.  Unless you’re melee, in which case you can continue your usual happy hump the boss’ ass pile until you see your empowered vortex warning.  Then you scatter to the winds–preferably not all in the same direction, and not all on top of healers.  We’ve actually had to assign melee DPS directions to run, and this may not be a bad idea for you, either.  The OTHER time you don’t stay spread out is when there’s a empowered fire ball floating towards someone.  Then those of you in the area kind of scoot together because it’s the old “the more people there are, the less damage there is” trick.  As soon as it’s done it’s burney thing, everyone has cooties once more. 

Ranged should just spread out and stay there, damn it.  That means you, warlock who keeps wandering into my range.  Yeah, you.  

Hunters (or some other ranged DPS, perhaps, but we have eleventy billion hunters) tend to have another task: watching for floaty orbs.  No, NOT those dark float orbs–the sparkly orange ones.   Those can NOT touch the floor.  Ever ever.  Your healers will cry at you over the AoE damage if they touch the floor.  They tend to appear long the sides/back of the room, so hunters should be assigned an area to watch.  If you only have one in your corner of the world, sic your pet on it.  As long as it’s not on the stairs, they’ll happily keep the ball off the floor by themselves.  The stairs will sometimes wig the pets out (though spirit beasts and wind serpents, due to their ranged attacks, handle things on the stairs just fine) so you might have to pew pew those on your own. 

Healers 

The tricky part of this for us is healing the wandering Kel tank.  Assigning a healer to follow them is suicide–this is where holy pally beacons often come in handy.  Beacon the Kel tank and throw some supporting heals on him whenever he happens to wander into your range.  Another option is to have two healers keep an eye on him, one for each side of the room–when he’s out of range for one, he’s in range for the other. 

Otherwise, assign your usual tank healers to the other two tanks and raid heals as normal.   If you have your Vel tank and his healer stuck over on one side, be sure that another healer is lurking within range, just in case.

Ice Cream Social: Festergut

I will be explaining this mostly from a 10s standpoint, as I’m most familar with that version of the fight. 

Basic Concepts:
-DPS
-DPS MOAR
-OMG DPS FASTER FASTER FUUUUUUUUU-
-Hug people with stuff that is good!
-OMG OMG OMG THE TANK, THE TANK HEAL THE TANK OH FUCK

Tanks
You know that whole swap tanks at a certain # of debuffs routine?  Yeah, that again.  Tank him in the center and swap at 9 buffs.  You do not want 10.  At all.  Ever.  Be careful just after the switch that you do not pull the boss back onto yourself.

Do your best lawlDPS when you’re not tanking.

The boss will also have a stacking buff on himself-Inhale Blight.  At 3, it’s ouchy, so you might want to have an itchy cooldown finger to take the pressure off your healer. 

DPS
This fight is…all on you.  No pressure!  None at all!

3 ranged (8 in 25s?) need to fan out in front of the boss.  The fewer healers you stick out there the better.  These players will occasionally be hit by Vile Gas, causing them to vomit uncontrollably (hence why having healers out there is bad!).  Spreading out is important because no one wants to get vomited on, okay?  Ew.

The DPS most hindered by movement, along with the melee, should be right behind the boss.

Periodically during the fight spores will appear.  In 10s, there’ll be 2.  EVERYONE needs the buff provided by the spore-so there should be one in ranged and one in melee.  Sometimes they spawn this way-sometimes they don’t!   Typically we pick one person in ranged who gets a mark on their head and is the designated Spore Hug Person.  If there’s a healer in the back, it’s usually them, so they don’t have to move.  

If the spore spawns in ranged, then all of the ranged give the designated a person a hug until the spore asplodes.  If both spawn in melee, the raid leader should call out who has to run to the back.

The melee group should scoot under the boss a bit so that the tanks get the spore as well.  Once the buff has been dispensed, return to your spots.

If you don’t have the Inoculation from the spores, you will die during Pungent Blight.  End of story.

Aside from that, DPS your hearts out.

Healers

This fight can be 2 or 3 healed.  BoO tends to 3 heal it-we found the damage that went out was a bit too much for 2, though we did scary dances with the enrage timer that way.

For the raid healers it tends to be business as usual (aside from the whole deal with the spores, explained in the DPS section).  For the tank healer, at least when you first start downing this boss, you’re going to spaz.  After a couple of upgrades I didn’t find it so bad, but the first time?  I was scraping the bottom of the mana barrel, and on one attempt the tank died because I took 1 GCD to fiend.

Yeah.  There’s my tip of the day: fiend when the boss has 1 or 2 stacks of Inhale Blight, not 3.  Never 3.   Forget using Hymn of Hope on this fight-not happening.  Same thing applies to other healers-if you have a mana regen ability that eats a GCD?  Be careful!

Ice Crown Social: Saurfang

There’s a few number of ways to handle this boss, so let’s poke at them!

Saurfang stands on top of the stairs.  Everyone else except for your two tanks should stand…not on the stairs. 

Tanks:

Welcome to Yet Another Tank Swapping Fight.  This time, if you fuck up, the boss heals like OMG WHOA and your DPS screams at you and your healers weep.  Okay?  Okay.  So when he puts Rune Blood on you, scream TAUNT, TAUNT into your mic really loud just in case the other tank is reading 4chan again.

There’s a soft enrage at 30% to be aware of.

Cranky Tank also likes to use Shockwave when the adds spawn so that he knocks one silly.  

Heals:

First off, your third healer (or whoever your bitch healers are in 25s) need to go DPS.  A holy pally and a disc priest is an AMAZING team for this, but most things work.  A disc priest on the raid can help reduce the amount of blood power he gets from his blood novas, by bubbling the nova target.  At least I think that’s how it works…I’m normally shadow this fight.  Or huntering.  >.>

It doesn’t get frantic for you until he throws a Mark of the Fallen Champion on someone after 100 BP are gained.  This is where paladin Bacon Hax can come in handy-beacon the Marked target and continue on as normal.  I’m not a fan of letting the Marked target die if at all possible, because sometimes it’s a healer and well, that just sucks.  When there’s two Marks up…uh…uh…well, then you pray that your DPS is on the ball.

DPS:

Ranged, spread the fuck out.  No, really.  If you’re giving hugs to each other, you’re increasing the about of BP.  :(

Anyway, two of you (or…more of you for 25s…man I don’t even know how many spawn for 25s, I should) will probably be assigned to deal with the adds, and this is where things can vary.

We’ve had two hunters kite them, usually with ranged DPS switching targets to get them down.  Use frost traps, etc.  If you’re not toting around multiple hunters, a boomkin can root/typhoon if it gets too close.  YOU DO NOT WANT THEM MELEEING ANYONE.  This creates BP, and BP creates sad.

We’ve also had a hunter kite one while melee DPS stuns and kills the shit out of the other one.  This is only advised if you have a way to keep it stunned: see above CAPSing. 

When not killing beasts, DPS the shit out of the boss-you know, like normal.

Ice Cream Social: Gunship Battle

The goal of this fight is to sink the enemy’s battleship.  It’s the Wrath version of the Chess Event, so this is going to be a Strat Guide Lite because…there’s not a lot to it.

A tank, healer, and some DPS stay on your boat to defend it from attackers.   Aside from making sure that everything is aggro’d on someone (because otherwise they’re damaging your ship), this is loleasy.

A tank, a healer, and some DPS get to be the Away Team and beam rocket over to the other ship.  If we’re being lazy and three healing it we send two healers over, but one could easily go DPS and help pew pew the mage down.  The mage is your only target-the tank just tanks the enemy commander whosit but isn’t DPS’d at all. The hardest part is jumping back all together-if the tank jumps back before you do, you go splat.  I know this from experience.  \o/  Make sure to call it out on Vent.

Typically two (usually melee) DPS that are on the away team are also manning the cannons.  Your sign to board is the cannons being frozen, anyway.  While the cannons are not ice cubed, pew pew the NPCs, because if they don’t die, they get stronger, and stronger NPCs are teh fail.   Ranged DPS can help out with this as well between attacks.

Kills things, collect loot, done.  Oh, and if someone gets stuck on the enemy ship as it leaves, lol at them, because they’re screwed.

ETA: Circles are bad, don’t stand in them.   The other ship has cannons too, after all.

It is highly recommended that you run with a bear at least once.  This has little to do with the fight itself and everything to do with seeing  a bear with a rocket strapped to its ass.

Ice Cream Social: Lord Marrowgar

I know that Social doesn’t match the last C.  Shut up.  I like it.

Lord Marrogar

“I see…only darkness…”
Revised: 12/11/09
Now with actual experience!

Lord Marrogar is not a complicated fight.  He uses several mechanics that-GASP!-we have seen before.  First things first: have everyone target the boss and note the red ring beneath him.  Cluster up right there, BENEATH the boss (though not hugging the tanks) because that way, you won’t have to deal with the fire.  The only ones who have to worry about that are your hunters.

TANKS
Remember saber lash?  Of course you do.  Hug your fellow tank(s) with the desperation of…well, someone who will die if you don’t.  You need 2 of you  for 10 man and 3 for 25.   He’ll whirlwind, and it’ll be ouchy, but don’t let the boss stray too far from you during his lawnmower rampage because it’s also an aggro dump.

RANGED
If you ventured into the Black Temple, you may have memories of having to free impaled players.  If not, then think of snobolds…only in the form of a bone spike.  And instead of sitting on your head going OMNOMNOM, it’s using your body as some sort of gruesome flag. Yeah.  That sucks, so free anyone impaled with bone spike.  And did I really just use impale and bone in the same sentence without coming up with something witty and perverted?  Damn.

Also, the whirlwind? Aggro dump.  Say it with me, kiddos:  STOP DPS.  You should be scattering away from the boss, anyway. 

MELEE
See: above commentary in ranged about freeing people with bone spikes.  Also, this boss does a whirlwind.  More than that, he does a whirlwind that LEAVES A BLEED after a couple of seconds, so for the love of all that is holy, GET THE FUCK OUT OF IT. 

Oh, and there’s fire.  Don’t stand in it.  Though if you’re not a hunter and you’re standing in it, you’re in the wrong damn spot.

HEALERS
Be prepared to heal the hell out of the tanks.  We had two healers (disc priest and holy pally) on the tanks and a resto druid watching the raid, but during whirlwind expect to be sprinkling some heals everywhere even if you’re on a tank.  Bubbles are your friend.

Loot of Interest to the Disc Priest:
Little, at least in 10.  There is one cloth offering, a sp/haste belt called Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner in the 10 man version.  The 25 man version offers a sp/haste trinket (Bone Sentinel’s Amulet), a dagger (sp/crit, Frozen Bonespike), another belt (sp, crit, AND haste, Crushing Coldwraith Belt), and a ring that might not be bad in a pinch (sp/haste/mp5, Marrowgar’s Frigid Eye).

ToC 10: Northrend Beasts

Basic Theories:

• DONT STAND IN THE FIRE
• OMG HEAL THE TANK
• OMG DEBUFFS
• OMG GET OUT OF THE WAY

Phase One  – Gormok the Impaler

Tanks: Two tanks are required.  One should taunt off the other when 3-4 impale stacks are reached.  The boss can be disarmed.

DPS: The priority of the ranged DPS is to kill snobolds when they are thrown onto a player.  They chuck fire and can stun the poor sap they’re attached to.  Get out of the fire, blah blah.  There’s no time to drink between phases so if you’re a mana user, plan accordingly.

Healers: Your typical fill-green-bars fight except for the snobolds OMNOMNOMing your head and the impale stacks on the tanks.  I typically ask one of the raid healers (a tree, if I have one) to keep an eye on the OT as the tank healer switches.  Keep some heals up on the tanks as you transition to the next phase…

All casters: don’t hug the boss…his stomp is also a spell interrupt inside 15 yards.

Phase Two – Worms of Suck and Fail

I seriously hate this phase.

There’s a  couple of ways to do it-you can pick a spot and have the poison debuffed people stand there for the fire debuffed people to cuddle with, or leave it up to the fire people to pay attention, or…  *waves her hands*  Whatever.  With us, it’s general chaos.

People should spread out for this phase so that the burning bile debuff doesn’t hit too many people.

Usually, Acidmaw dies first, because without burning bile the other debuff is, well, impossible to get rid of. 

Tanks: Ooookay.  So.  To start with, Acidmaw will be rooted and Dreadscale will be mobile.  Acidmaw will spit paralytic poison at people, which will need to be cleansed by burning bile.   Since the paralytic poison slowly immobilizes you, it’s generally easier for the burning bile person to go give them a hug. 

The mobile worm will periodically drop a slime pool and need to be moved.

The second worm will enrage when the first dies, but it’s not a OMG OMG OMG type of enrage.

DPS:  The rooted worm will sweep, so melee don’t want to go play with him.  You’ll want to be careful on the mobile worm as well, however, because he drops slime pools. 

 If you get the burning bile debuff, see if anyone with poison needs a hug.

Healers:  Same deal with you and the burning bile debuff.  Otherwise, standard fill green bars whilst not standing in ouchy.

Phase 3 – Icehowl

Zzzzz.

Tanks: Tank and spank, for the most part.  One tank fight, so one of you gets to loltankdps.

Everyone: Spread out, because he’ll do a freezy breathy thingy and you don’t exactly want all of your healers chillin’ out together, you know? 

Periodically he’ll jump into the middle of the room, throwing everyone back and stunning them.  If he targets you or anyone near you-in other words, if you can see his ugly mug pointing in his direction-GTFO!  Strafe to one side or risk almost certain death and being lol’d at.  If everyone succeeds at paying attention, he’ll hit the wall and stun himself.  DPS, gogogo! 

Melee – he has a knock back.

If someone does fail at GTFO, a hunter can tranq the resulting rage. 

3 minute enrage timer.

ETA:  Tags.  :P

How2Ony

• Stay away from the whelp caves!
• NO REALLY, STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE WHELP CAVES
• and the bosses tail…
• …and her head…
• …and deep breaths…
• …and the big adds when they make the burny circles…
• …and where the big adds SPAWN lest they come nom you when you are not a tank…
• …and the lava spouting cracks during phase three…
• Did I mention stay the fuck away from the whelp caves?!
• GET OUT OF THE LAVA POOL BY THE ENTRACE ZEREN!  FFS!

Big Ugly Thing: Vezax Strat

General Concepts:

• Don’t stand in shit that hurts
• …except when it’s good for you
• OMG OMG OMG DAMAGE ON THE TANK
• Everyone around you has cooties (ranged)
• Oh look a gimmick

TANK:

You’ll only need one tank unless you are going for the hard mode.  For the most part, it’s a basic tank and spank-stand there and let your face get beat in.  When Vezax starts casting Surge of Darkness, be sure to have some internal or external cooldowns available to survive the OMG WTF BBQ DAMAGE that he is going to inflict on you.   We did it with a prot warrior and a disc priest-cycling warrior cooldowns/trinkets plus Pain Suppression were adequate.

DPS:

You need at least 4 people (9 for 25 man) standing 15 yards or more from the boss.  IF YOU ARE AN INTERRUPTER, YOU HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT JOB.  IF YOU FUCK UP YOU WIPE THE RAID.  No pressure, man, but Searing Flames is OMG BAD.  Set up a rotation and stick to it.

Mana-based ranged DPS will want to be the ones standing out at range, spread out.  You spread out for two reasons-one, to keep too many people going LA LA LA and getting hit by a Shadow Crash, and also to avoid spreading a debuff that heals the boss.  Boss healing is bad, mmkay?

Anyway, back to Shadow Crash. Think back on Hodir for a moment and the Big Snowpiles.  Run OUT of the shadow crash, and then back IN.  It’ll…fuck, screw the technical terms.  It’ll make your DPS go up and your e-penis get bigger, okay?  When not standing in the pretty shadow crash affect, do not DPS.  Wand, auto-shot, WTF ever…just don’t DPS.  Why?  BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO MOTHER FUCKING MANA REGEN.

When we did this, we assigned a hunter to Crystal Duty.   The wowiki strat has the following: “After every Surge of darkness, a melee or unoccupied ranged dps should go to kill the closest Saronite Vapor. All healers stand in until they have 6-7 debuffs, then step out. If that first regen is not enough, they can step in the vapor for another 6-7 debuffs (once they have lost the first 6-7 debuffs).”  That is…uh…not how we did it.  We had a hunter on Crystal Duty, and he would pop a crystal whenever one of the healers started whimpering and we’d run to it, rather than having the tank drag the boss around to crystals.  Any casters who found themselves needing a hit of mana later in the fight would just join in.

DO NOT PULL THE BOSS OFF THE TANK BECAUSE HE CANNOT BE TAUNTED. 

Healers:

All three of you can heal conservatively and dance in puddles at once, or do what we did-have one healer hold off a bit, and then cycle through healers as you run low.  Please note that your third healer will be whining that he is bored if you chose the latter, though.

You can see our DPS section for the note about wowiki’s strat vs ours on the puddles.  Either way, go puddle dance when you get low on mana.  Either go find the one your  DPS popped, or QQ at someone so they pop one for you.  Oh and uh, priests?  Don’t bubble when you go puddle dance, okay?  You don’t regen mana that way.  :(  We won’t talk about how I found that out, alright?

Although the non mana regen thing sounds scary, even the healers thought this cake was loleasy after Mim.

Note to disc priests in particular: Use Pain Supression for the first Surge.  I suggest this because on one of our initial attempts, the tank called for it while I was puddle dancing.  Using it first improved the timing so that I could om nom nom mana safely. 

Also, you may  want to consider pretending to be DPS and shadow crash dancing. I don’t reccomend this for 10 man, as I found myself still doing direct healing, but for 25s it’s a thought.  Normally shadow crash decreases healing done, but guess what?  Bubbles aren’t heals!  You can cast bubbles at reduced mana cost this way.

 

I am not doing a Yogg Strat…because I don’t need to.  The best one ever is here.  It’s like, someone channeled from my brain and made pictures for it.  WIN!

I call the blue lion! Mimiron Strat

“Amber, aren’t you skipping a bunch?”
Yeah but we’re doing this on Monday, so I figured it was time for a refresher. 

DISCLAIMER: I haven’t actually DOWNED this boss yet.  We’ve gotten through a few phases but I was too busy going OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD HEALS to really pay attention to nuances.  In other words, I have no idea what the fuck goes on because OH GOD THE TANK DIED WHAT THE FUCK BREZ BREZ OH LORD THE OTHER TANK DIED WHAT THE HELL.

Basic Concepts:

• Don’t stand in shit that hurts
• DPS what you’re told WHEN  you’re told, mister
• AMG HEAL THE TANK
• LOL DAMAGE EVERYWHERE
• Oh look adds

PHASE 1 – Mini Lootmobile

In this phase, he does stuff, and this stuff stings.  He drops mines on the ground, and they hurt like a bitch, so avoid those.  He also does something called Shock Blast, which is an AoE, so tanks and melee need to GTFO.   Your rogues are probably going to die, because…they’re rogues, and that’s what they do.

The tank and healers need to have cool downs ready for when he uses Plasma Blast  every 30 seconds or so.   If you don’t, your tank will probably die, too, and then you’ll have to listen to him bitch and no one wants that.

Spread out slightly (5 yds) so that napalm shell doesn’t splash damage onto anyone else.   Your raid healers need to keep their eyes peeled for this icky bit of fire damage.

PHASE 2

Keep spread out, dorks.

Healers, he’s going to be spamming random shit on the raid.  Randomly.   Try to keep people topped up for when he decides to randomly hit the same person with everything, as per Normal Boss Operation. 

Tanks, you get to lol DPS.  Enjoy.  :P

When he “spins up”, everyone needs to get their asses away from his front end.  He’ll cast a laser barrage and unlike your disc priest’s lasers, you don’t want these.  Run away from it.

Circles on the ground are bad.

PHASE 3

LOL WARLOCK TANK.  I mean, er.  He’s airborne in this phase so you need a ranged DPS who can soak some damage.  A warlock is actually a good choice, though.  A hunter works, as well.

Due to the fact that you’re dealing with ads, you might want to clump into a range group, and a tank/melee group, so that things aren’t total chaos.

Tanks, put away your loldps weapons.  You get to play with Assault bots!  They hit like a train and oh, they root you too.  Someone should play cleanse bitch to clear off the snare they put on the tank, and they’ll take a good amount of damage.  In 25s these actually have to be kited by some ranged DPS who can snare.   Apparently this is not the case anymore.  Dear “real strat” websites, please to be updating your shit, kthx. 

There will be junk bots who wander around aimlessly.  These can safely be ignored and will probably die to incidental AoE.  Bomb bots are a wee bit ouchy, though, so you don’t want to give them hugs.  They can be kited and killed.

Put loot on free for all.  When assault bots die, they drop a Magnetic Core.  Picking these up and dropping them underneath the boss will cause him to descend and take more damage for a brief period of time.

PHASE 4 – ONCE MORE, WITH PIRATES ROBOTS

All that shit but together.  Don’t step on the mines, don’t stand in the lasers, and don’t hug the boss during Shock Blast.  The head and body have separate aggro tables, so you’ll again need a ranged to “tank” the head while your tank tanks the tank.  I mean, the bottom.  The mini lootmobile.  Whatever.   They maintain their aggro tables from earlier in the fight.

Oh, and they all have to die at about the same time.  Enjoy!

Obviously, DPS will have to be coordinated.  Pay attention to what you’re told and not the damn meters.

No Tantrum Required: XT Strat

Basic Concepts:

• LOL DAMAGE EVERYWHERE
• DPS what you’re told WHEN you’re told, mister
• Don’t spread the cooties

We use two tanks for this fight.  One tanks the boss, and the other gathers up big robots (Pummelers).   You can tank the boss directly across from the entrance if you wish (we do), or you can tank him on one of the junk piles.

DPS, you…DPS the boss.  Except when the heart is down, then you DPS the heart.  If you’re AoE you may be assigned to watch a pile and take care of the adds.  If the little robots reach the boss, they heal him, which is bad, mmmkay?  Bomb bot thingys go asplody, so 1) don’t stand near them and 2) make them asplode so they asplode the little bots. 

Spread out.  Everyone around you can potentially have cooties.  For shiny white cooties, 5 yards away is safe.  For purply glowy cooties, you need to be 10 yards away.  If you do not have a means of showing distance (/range for DBM), then GTFO my raid, scrub.  That or go stand in a god damn corner.

Healers, I’m sorry.  You’ll need to watch for a couple of things this fight.  Watch for people with cooties.  Keep everyone as topped off as you can because the boss with pitch a fit every so often.  He will tend to do this while you also have cooties, just to be a dick.  Use bubbles/AoE heals/liberally sprinkled hots/whack a mole/whatever to keep everyone up.  If you have mana to spare and are a dork like me, you can run into the adds and HOLY NOVA! for shits and giggles.  Just uh, dont’ get yourself blown up by bombs.  Not that I’ve done that, or anything.