Icecrown Citadel 3/4

Remember in Karazhan when your raid needed specific abilities? How Moroes was a total nightmare without some sort of stun lock, frost trap or other crowd control? I sure do, I spent hours and hours on that fight.

Well the theme is back again in Icecrown Citadel! Kam got to go bosh some of the place in 10 player mode. Shocking that on the final raid of the expansion, some care might be needed in raid selection!

Trash
Luckily we had two priests, so the undead trash had some crowd control applied to it (CC!? Yes, I know!) and it went smoothly. Unfortunately I felt it wise to hold off the AOE stuff with actually-CCed mobs, so less MT spamming was had. We also had a rogue, so he could sneak around looking for traps which spawn large skeletons. We then sprung these traps, because at this stage the whole raid is after Ashen Verdict reputation.

Lord Marrowgar
Marrowgar looks very cool as you approach his room, as he is a giant bag of bones with 4 skulls for heads. The fight turns out to be a simple two phase deal - the first phase we stood behind him, just inside his hit box so that his line of frost attacks utterly missed us. Occasionally someone would get put into an ice cube, I mean Bone Spike, which has to be damaged to break them out. So spank Marrowgar, spank Bone Spike, etc. Hiding inside the hit box may be not entirely as designed by Blizzard, but it works so hey there you go.

Second phase Marrowgar goes mad and whirlwinds around the place, also spamming lines of frost, so on this one everyone was equal, melee and ranged alike, and we all had to run away when he was close and dance around avoiding the lines of frost. This was pretty easy and some cunning self-heals never harm if you manage to get caught on a wall or something silly like that. At the end the tanks picked him up and maybe took a nasty Saber Lash so no standing close by the tanks until they have positioned him again!

Any old raid would do for this, it was a fun fight and due to the tank-and-spank nature of phase 1, we got him killed first time and moved onto...

Lady Deathwhisper
This fight was fun and games with mob kill orders, plus some of the Reanimated adds are immune to magic damage, and some to melee damage. As a class who's damage is roughly 50/50 magic and melee, this is a bad thing and caused me to do much hard DPS where I barely tickled the mob in question.

Again a 2 phase fight, in the first phase all the deeps were assigned to kill the various Adherents and Fanatics who spawn from one side of the room, then switch spawn side 30 seconds later.

In phase 2 once her mana shield is gone, Deathwhisper turns part Patchwerk part Vezax and demands to be killed, while still putting green stuff on the ground. She tries to Frostbolt a random party member for 40k, with a 2 second cast, which must be interrupted. Luckily us Enhancement Shaman are ideal for this with Wind Shear so I got to it and the fight was all over quickly.

The spell and melee immune mobs are a real bitch tho, a bad mix of spell and melee DPS could bring you grinding to a halt on this fight.

Gunship
The Gunship battle was fun and easy, I got the fun task of jetting over to smack the alliance mage while my melee friends stuck in the cannons. We 1 shotted the fight and I am really looking forward to doing this one again. Plus I snagged a Frost Giant's Cleaver which I've berserked up and everything, and unlike the Anubarak weapons, it is worn slung across the back so looks pretty damn impressive. I want another one now, especially as signs are the Battered Hilt will be pretty impossible to get.

I think any old raid would do for this thankfully.

Deathbringer
Deathbringer needs some ranged people plus they seem to need slows and/or knock-backs to deal with the Blood Beasts. Sadly we had 2 ranged and no knock-backs so after some comedy attempts to "ping-pong" the beasts between our hapless spriest and lock, we called it. Pity, as I have read my role would have been to stand there and spank Deathbringer. Apparently another attempt later on succeeded, although I was not there to soak up the lore.

Reputation
I reached halfway to friendly with Ashen Verdict for that run, so I am looking forward to a nice new ring soon when I can get Kam back into ICC.

The next wing opens this week too, so I needs my Deathbringer kill before it all goes a bit crazy with limited attempts, possible raid lock extensions and an utter inability to tell which bosses will be done on which nights. I also need more goes on the Gunship, for a chance at another big weapon.