Assault on Ice Crown Citadel

I was very excited as we formed up the Raid for Ice Crown Citadel.
Please note, this is a description of my night raiding Ice Crown. There are spoilers in this post. Read on at your own risk.
Our team consisted of Boston (Blood DK Tank), Honorshammer (Protection Paladin extraordinaire), Blackhaus (Disc/Holy Priest), Stark (Resto Shaman), Lakini (Boomkin/Resto), Donkatonk (Arcane Mage), Neovomonica (Destro Lock), Danath (Arms Warrior), Blueshield (Arms Warrior), and Ofn (normally Combat, but has switched to Mutilate for 3.3).
Once inside I checked my toon and saw that my Dodge was at 7.09%. This wasn’t unexpected but it still made me a sad panda to see it.
The atmosphere of Ice Crown is really well done. The art is beautiful and the music really sets the mood well. We started up the event and listened to Arthas and Tirion yelling at each other. We learned the fate of Bolvar Fordragon and set force to save him.
It was actually nice to have trash again. I guess it took an instance without any (ToC) to make us appreciate it. The amount was about right and the mobs were interesting. Some packs we AoE’ed and other packs we used single target and crowd control.
We had Ofn disarm the traps after Stark was so kind as to find one. Before long we were face to skull with Lord Marrowgar.
I was one of the few people in our raid group who had fought Leotharas in Serpent Shrine Cavern, but that experience really wouldn’t help out too much. Marrowgar does a whirlwind like Leo but getting hit by it doesn’t leave a Bleed DoT on you, and the damage is actually pretty small even on Cloth. We still tried to avoid as much as possible, but of all of Marrowgar’s tricks, the Whirlwind was the least threatening.
Our group did a pretty good job of avoiding Cold Flame and seemed to break people out of Spikes pretty quickly.
What we found really challenging was the Saber Lash. It hit me and Boston for about 12k a piece every second or so. The damage was manageable but our healers, and especially our Priest was hurting for mana before Marrowgar was even at 50%. We again lacked Replenishment in our raid.
I’m not the Raid Leader, and I probably talk too much in vent as it is. Boston is very patient with me. But after our issues with Anub’arak “What’s My Main Again” had put in the comments about a Warlock spec that included replenishment. I suggested our Warlock respect to Soul Leech.
He was a little resistant at first. I’m not sure why, but Blueshield pointed out to him that any potential loss of DPS would be worth it. You don’t tend to argue with a large plate wearing Tauren carrying a sword twice your body length.
After doing a couple of fights with Soul Leech, Neo was sold. He loved the spec because he had to Life Tap much less, which also helped out our healer’s mana.
Our Priest felt the difference immediately. It was like he had extended his mana bar 3 times.
Marrowgar went down two pulls after that, but not without some heroics from Blueshield.
It was about three quarters of the way through the attempt, and we were transitioning from a Whirlwind phase back to a normal phase. Boston and I were a little slow getting back together to soak the Saber Lash when Blackhaus got impaled. Our DPS freed him but we lost Boston. I hit Divine Protection (Paladin Shield Wall) and was able to solo Tank him for a few moments. We got a Battle Rez on Boston but DP was running out. Blueshield slapped on a Sword and Board, hit his own Shield Wall and leapt to my side. He got killed but he bought us enough time to get Boston buffed and healed up and back into position.
Marrowgar went down. Ofn got a new Cloak and we blew up the Spellpower plate. I refuse to take any healing gear.
We continued on and got to Lady Deathwhisper’s room. Several of us noticed how similar the room and the mob layout was to Blackheart the Inciter’s room in Shadow Labs. If she had said “Time for Fun”, we all were running for it.
She started her little speech and all of us were like Shut up already! The trash went down pretty quickly using a bit of CC and single target DPS. I love Avenger’s Shield but I am insanely jealous of Death Grip. Boston can get those Casters right where he wants them.
The two spiders ended up being a bit of a challenge, but we got them down without losing the raid.
Deathwhisper herself wasn’t too bad. I had expected Marrowgar to be the easier of the two but it was the other way around. We handled Phase 1 without much of a problem. Lady Deathwhisper puts up a mana shield that you have to burn down while Adds spawn. The Adds periodically become immune to magic or physical. You don’t see immune, you see Absorb. I had no trouble holding threat on either type of mob so I’m thinking Holy is something of an exception.
We went into Phase 2. I never noticed her Mind Control anyone but my back was to the Raid so maybe they just handled it without me realizing it. Lady has a debuff she puts on the current tank that reduces your threat by 20%. Boston and I didn’t manage it well and at one point each of us were working multiple stacks. Our Boomkin actually pulled aggro but Lady is tauntable so we got her right back.
We one shot her. Loot was given out and we headed for the elevator.
The first trash pack to the Gunship battle gave us some problems and actually wiped us. That’s when the bugs began.
We reentered the raid and started to walk back to the elevator which is located in Lady Deathwhisper’s room. As soon as we got into her room we were put into combat and one by one ported up to the trash mobs. After a couple of times of doing this, we all zoned out, dropped the raid and reformed it. But the same thing happened again.
So we buffed up at the entrance and made sure to stay together. We got ported again, but I was able to grab threat on most of the mobs and the healers kept me up long enough for us to get organized and start taking down their healers. Finally, we got that pack down.
We boarded our Gunship and assigned Gunners, Boarding Party, and Repelling party. I was in the repelling party.
My job was to repel boarders that came from the Alliance ship. I was actually glad that Boston hadn’t asked me to be on the Boarding Party. I really didn’t want to tank Muradin Bronzebeard. Muradin was one of my favorite characters in Warcraft and I really didn’t want to fight him. I don’t have as much of a connection to Saurfang as I do to Muradin. My inner dwarf was quite conflicted.
Muradin himself was no slouch and he put a hurting on Boston. After we wiped, Boston figured out Muradin puts a debuff on him if he wasn’t in melee range. So Boston made sure to stay in range and Black was able to keep him up.
As we got near the end of the attempt, we lost Boston. It was a race now. Could we finish off the Skybreaker before they summoned another mage to take out our cannons? We heard Muradin yell for a Sorcerer, and we knew we were in trouble. Then the Skybreaker went down with Boston, Blackhaus and the rest of the boarding team still on it.

They zoned back in, and ported up to Deathbringer, but Ogrim’s Hammer had stopped in midair. We could open the loot chest, but everyone who tried to loot it got an error message that said we weren’t eligible. I could see a Shield inside, Neverending Winter or something like that.
Boston and I both put in tickets but as of Saturday the only thing we had heard was that the ticket was being elevated.
It was past our raid time so we had to call it. We’ll give Deathbringer a try come Monday.

Comments

Veneretio said…
Ya, I had the same experience as you in that I found the first boss far, far more challenging than the second. Interestingly enough, the other 10 man group in our guild felt the opposite was the case and I've heard that everyone is split on which is harder and which is a joke all over the net. Weird, I guess we'll have to chalk it up to group composition. (btw on that note, doing 10s without replenishment is crazy, I'm glad your lock took the hit and it's good to hear he seems sold on it)

Good luck on Saurfang :D
Ken Dollar said…
Ya, the bugs abound in there right now. I have beaten the 10 and 25 man versions of the gunship battle, and the ship bugged both times. We could loot, but it didn't move up to Saurfang's ledge.
Grimadin said…
The thing I noticed from our run on the weekend was the yo-yo effect my health bar does for the entire time. Its a little disconcerting but overall nice to see the difficulty cranked up compared to TOC.

It would have been nice to make it to the gunship, I am jealous of your shot on it, even though it bugged out on you. NEXT time the adds on the second boss won't eat me alive and we shall succeed.
Tegoelf said…
The number of pallys who wont even consider healing amuses me. I guess I am different because I started after BC came out and went holy by choice to start raiding in 25's But anyway, sorry to hear about your troubles with the ship bugging, (though I wish I had seen that shield drop) I find it interesting that the horde must face Bolvar Fordragon while the alliance faces Saurfang, the lesser. I wonder if this is going to be used as part of the reason for cataclysm.

Anyways, embrace your inner healadin, and keep fighting the good fight.
Bacon said…
Ok I don't feel so undergeared now. I was OOM at 50% healing one of the main tanks. Bonus was I still had an innervate to blow as well as a mana pot.

Nice work by Blue to step up like that.
lethal said…
Lady Deathwhisper doesn't do Mind Control on 10 man.
On 25 man we were all set with 3 mages to sheep the MC target, first MC and I, the boomkin, gets MCed. can't sheep, so my housemate screams KILL HIM KILL him and i died :(

Ogrim's hammer bugged for us too, didnt go down to the ledge but we were able to loot the chest.
Jet packs are so bad-ass
BigFire said…
Well, our raid have 2 issue. Learning the fight, and tank learning how to deal with the mob pathing bug.

We did 25 man first, and found the hard boss to be Deathwisper and Deathbringer. In 25 man, Deathbringer is significantly harder than 10 man version due to more target for him to get blood point.

You'll definitely like Deathwisper 25 man version. By the time I did 25, 10, and 10 on an alt DK tank, I actually one shot her with a mostly alt crew, since we know the mechanics.

Oh, Gunship is basically Blizzard's reward for you to have gotten past Deathwisper.
Glad the soul leech suggestion helped.

We didn't have any issues with the gunship bugging out as Alliance. I wonder if its just a horde problem? The gunship really is a fun fight... we lost a healer and a dps right off the bat because they missed the jump :P It was funny because the entire time over vent the Guild Leader was going over things we needed to do better on our next attempt... and then we won.

Our fallen comrades corpses were at the teleport in front of Saurafang's room. Sadly we didn't get to kill him because our raid leader MT and his wife kept losing connection causing wipes. Got him down to 2 million health on one attempt before wiping to D/C. Hopefully wednesday we won't have any issues.

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