The Die Is Cast

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Once the Blood Princes were well in hand, TDC decided to head back to The PlagueWorks for a go at Festergut, Rotface's "twin". We'd not spent much time on him in 25, based on our Rotface obsession. However, we had 45 minutes left in the raid, and thought a little work would be good for us. Boy, were we about to be surprised...

Festergut is, in essence, a DPS check. He has a 5 minute enrage timer and 40M hit points, making maximum dps critical for success. The encounter is, however, more than that. Because we chose to go with 5 healers and 2 tanks, our healers and tanks had to be 100% on the ball with cooldowns and Holy Sh*% abilities (tm). There was no room for error at all in their play.

While the healers and tanks were sweating bullets, the dps'ers had it "easy". All we had to do was pump out 7K plus each. Not an easy feat by any stretch. Add to this ranged dps being hit by Fester's vomit (which incapacitates), gaining the protection of spawned spores to innoculate vs. nature damage, and the requirement that NOBODY die in order to make the timer, and we were set for an epic fight.

With only 45 minutes to work on the encounter, we wanted to focus on getting the tank transitions well managed, and getting the healers comfortable running with 5 (as opposed to our normal 6 or even 7). We ran through 4 attempts before time was almost up. As we approached our last attempt of the night, the standard TDC joke was made about this being the attempt that resulted in success. As the timer counted down, tank transitions were handled flawlessly, healers were rotating cooldowns masterfully, and dps was bringing the pain. We knew we had a chance. 45 seconds to enrage - the first members of the raid went down. 30 seconds - a couple more lost, but we're almost there. 15 seconds - tank down. 10 seconds - second tank down - all hell is breaking loose - we can do this! The final push as dps are going down one after the other...HE'S DOWN!! 5 of us left standing. Enrage timer? 5:01. It ain't pretty, but neither are we. Great job folks!

TDC has really enjoyed the encounters so far, and we're looking forward to taking our battle to the Lich King himself in future weeks. Git'r Dun!

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After going toe to toe-like appendage with Rotface for an extended period of time, TDC decided to take a break from The PlagueWorks and go check out the Blood Prince encounter, newly opened in the Crimson Halls wing of ICC. This encounter is similar in many ways to the Illidari Council encounter in BT, but does provide some new twists, resulting in a satisfyingly challenging encounter.

The encounter begins with the 3 Blood Princes on the floor. Each of them must be tanked (two normally, one by a ranged dps'er - we chose a Warlock) and share a health pool. The Princes alternate an "active" buff, making only one of them susceptible to damage at any one time. As you might imagine, each of them have different abilities that require the raid to react differently in order to survive. Valanar is all about electricity (which we all know Muddy Waters 'vented), and summons but a Shock Vortex (must be avoided) and Kinetic Bombs (which we decided to pet-tank). Taldaram is the fiery one of the bunch, conjuring both Balls o' Flame and Empowered Balls o' Flame (which require the targetted raid member to kite the ball through the raid, thus depleting damage). Keleseth is the Prince that needs to be range tanked; he specializes in shadow magic, which the tank mitigates by collecting Dark Nuclei from around the room.

While the numerous mobs and different abilities make this encounter sound chaotic, it's a very manageable fight as long as raiders don't get tunnel vision. This encounter is about everyone doing their job, and ensuring that all the pieces of the encounter fit together. TDC made quick work of the Princes, setting up a future confrontation with the Blood-Queen herself, Lana'thal

The PlagueWorks section of Icecrown Citadel is dominated by Professor Putricide and his two "children", Rotface and Festergut. Consistent with the spirit of Icecrown, The Plagueworks provide an increase in difficulty from the Lower Citadel, with Fester and Rottie being two very different, but equally challenging fights. TDC decided we'd focus on Rotface first. This proved to be a somewhat painful decision...

The Rotface encounter is all about control; control of adds, control of movement, control of timing and raid movement. At its most simple, the encounter is easy. Avoid the bad stuff, move your add to the add tank, and maintain steady role performance in light of these requirements. In actuality, this encounter caused TDC a lot of broken eardrums from Ventrilo "encouragement" and "correction".

The real trick with Rotface is ensuring that whenever a raid member spawns an ooze, that ooze must be moved expeditiously to the add tank and combined with the big ooze he/she is kiting. Once a total of 5 oozes have been combined in this way, the big ooze explodes, and the process starts all over again. As the encounter progresses, the adds spawn more frequently, and the pace of kiting/exploding/avoiding the bad stuff gets more and more frenetic. During the majority of our attempts, we consistenly hit 25% before the chaos overtook the raid, causing wipes. After working on this encounter far too long, we focused on getting the raid to stay calm, look for their kite path before the add spawned on them, and move quickly once it did. This controlled approach led to our eventual victory over the smelly mass known as Rotface, and set up the opportunity to end Professor Putricide's lovely little nuclear family.

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As the Skybreaker made "port", TDC came face to face with the only remaining obstacle in Icecrown's Lower Citadel: Deathbringer Saurfang. Despite his initial discounting of dwarves (and their allies), Saurfang quickly learned to sing a different tune.

The Saurfang encounter fits the mold of many new encounters in WotLK, focusing on a soft enrage mechanic that limits the effective ability of a raid to down him by increasing his ability to deal damage over time. This is based on his ability, driven by blood power gained over the course of the fight, to mark individual raid members and gain a buff if they are kept alive. This makes for a very effective time and execution challenge for the raid.

The mechanics of the fight are challenging as well; Saurfang is tanked on his platform, with two tanks alternating in order to manage a debuff. Melee is arrayed around him, and allowed to go to town as long as they are careful about AoE/multiple target attacks. The reason for this is that periodically Saurfang spawns 5 blood beasts, control of which is the key component of the encounter. The blood beasts must be pulled and kited by ranged, since they do damage (and provide blood power to Saurfang) whenever they're near raid members. We set up a frost trap in the center of the room, and kited them back and forth through this as necessary, as well as using stun/snare/knockback effects to keep them at range. Once we mastered this process, as well as making quick decisions about whether or not to let a marked individual die, Saurfang was no match for the Dwarvish Smackdown we brought to bear on him (and oh, yeah, there were some night elves that helped...).

To top off the encounter, there was an excellent bit of lore, as Saurfang the Elder arrived to retrieve the corpse of his son, previously lost during the Battle of the Wrathgate. Well done Blizzard, this was a great end to the Lower Citadel, and whet our appetite for more. On to The PlagueWorks!

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The Gunship Battle is one of the most interesting and fun encounters we've seen in WoW, and hearkens back to the days of swashbuckling epics. The premise behind this encounter is the raid team boarding the Skybreaker (which we all know as a base of operations in Icecrown), and heading out to the upper reaches of the Citadel. Unfortunately, it's not all smooth sailing, as the Horde makes an attempt at ruining our cruise.

The Gunship Battle combines vehicle/device combat (the Skybreaker's cannons, which must be used to damage the hull of the Horde ship) with heavy raid movement (Rocket Packs - could anything be cooler than that???) between the ships. The raid must board the Horde vessel numerous times during the encounter in order to kill an enemy mage, whose appearance causes the cannons to be inoperable while he's alive. Once he's dead, the boarding team must use their rocket packs to jump back to the Skybreaker, all the while the defending party is gathering adds that spawn on the Skybreaker. This pattern is repeated a number of times, ending in the eventual defeat and retreat of the Horde ship.

This is a pretty trivial encounter from a raid perspective; the toughest challenge has been to ensure that all the members of our boarding party are actually back on the Skybreaker before sending the Horde ship packing. Not that I'm pointing fingers...

Thanks Blizzard for a lighthearted and lore appropriate encounter that provides an excellent segue to subsequent battles.

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The second encounter in ICC is Lady Deathwhisper. This fight is one of the most enjoyable challenges we've seen so far, requiring excellent raid coordination in a chaotic environment.

The trick with Deathwhisper lies in add control; in P1, she is protected by a mana shield that keep her from taking damage. In order to bring this mana shield down, the raid must burn through her shield. Sounds easy, right? The complication lies in the fact that throughout P1, Deathwhisper summons numerous adds that must be tanked and burned down, which takes focus away from her shield. To further complicate matters, these adds have different immunities and weaknesses, which require that various types of dps only attack specific targets, as their damage is largely mitigated by mobs resistant to them. The challenge in P1 (the key to the fight) is in balancing dps in a very hectic environment, keeping enough dps focused on her mana shield while also managing adds quickly and effectively.

Once TDC worked out the right mix of dps on each target, P2 was a breeze - in essence, it's a tank and spank, with key abilities that must be interrupted in order to keep the raid rolling. After the work on P1, we were ready to see her chewing on the floor, which was exactly the result we got in little time.

ICC continues to impress with the quality and challenge of the encounters. This feels like the raiding we all love, and we can't wait to see what's next.