Icecrown Lady Deathwhisper

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Originally Posted by Horacio

As a warrior, the hardest thing for me was gathering the three adds as they spawn. It worked really well having a DPS DK drop D&D on the third spawn point while I stradled the other two and picking them all up there, peeling the 3rd off the DK. From that point, shockwave is your friend. Spell reflect is helpful too. I'm considering going back to imp but with all those mobs and trying to hold aggro, threat is at a premium.

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Trying it last night we never got to phase 2 either on 25man, and would always get overwhelmed once her shield was around 25%. The first few attempts I would try to gather all adds, but eventually I just stopped trying to tank the adherants and had the DPS burn them first instead. They die incredibly fast, and healing any bolts they managed to get out wasn't an issue.

The problem we ran into was just plain not having the DPS to keep the fight going smoothly, while at the same time keeping enough DPS on the boss to actually get through the first phase in a reasonable amount of time. Might be going in for another attempt tonight, but after one shotting Marrowgar it's a little discouraging.

My group is mostly in 245 gear. I think we just need to better coordinate to get through this encounter.

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Originally Posted by Horacio

The big, enraged/mutant adds was our downfall last night. Its definitely a challenging tanking assignment but our biggest problem came when the empowered mobs would stack up on one side (usually the side opposite where I was) and start taking people out.

As a warrior, the hardest thing for me was gathering the three adds as they spawn. It worked really well having a DPS DK drop D&D on the third spawn point while I stradled the other two and picking them all up there, peeling the 3rd off the DK. From that point, shockwave is your friend. Spell reflect is helpful too. I'm considering going back to imp but with all those mobs and trying to hold aggro, threat is at a premium.

We never made it to phase 2 but we got some reps in on it.

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Don't bother tanking one caster, just have dps focus him first while preferably having someone who can interrupt there. Meanwhile focus on charging the other caster and taunting the melee to you or just tanking 2 melees depending on the case. That's how we did it at least.

Our big issue was when she empowered diformed "what's their name", like you mentioned, and dispels didn't go off on time - those things can go through tanks like a knife through butter (i've felt it on my skin while tanking the 10man). As a small addendum here - i did actually kite 1 or 2 diformed adds in 10 man as tank while i called out dps to bring it down; it's got a slow movespeed and it generally was brought down before hitting me more than once. This, of course, if you can afford to kite him at the moment.

Anyway this really was an awesomely designed encountered, enjoyed every second of it from the whipes to the kill :)

I glanced through the comments and didn't see it asked, so I figured I'd throw it out there.

In regards to the Frostbolt in phase 2, can a warrior tank Spell Reflect it?

I dont know if ne one already have posted this addition to the strat but... Last thuesday while we were wiping on Deathwisper and I had the idea... put the 1st group of mele on the boss when we had done with adds and the 2nd group at the back to kill the extra add. So we had alot more dps on Deathwisper and less mele fooling arround and wasting time on running. witch is werry helpfull when your ranged dont dps enought to drop her shild down before she enrage and wipe us all...

For what it's worth I figured I'd point out a few things that helped us finally overcome this encounter in 25-man, when it was such a breeze on 10-man.

The fanatics, at least, can be hex'd and poly'd. It appears that they can also be disarmed in the normal version. We would hex one of the Fanatics from the left side so it's easier for melee to dodge only 1 cleave.

We found that an Adherent could effectively be stun-locked from 51% on, so they didn't get a chance to put up spell reflect. As we were a very caster-heavy makeup tonight, this was a huge help for us as well.

If the mob in the rear was a Fanatic, the tank would bring it up the middle a little bit, and the ranged that were assigned to the boss would turn and burn it, and then return to the boss. If it was a caster, she would call out for the melee on the left to come burn after their adherent was dead.

As a Resto Druid, I would pop into bear and taunt Deformed Fanatics away from the tank to avoid them being one-shot. Their slow movement speed allowed time for ranged to burn it while it traveled to me, and if needed, back to the original tank.

Hope this helps you guys. 10-man was pretty much a breeze, we only kept 1 DPS on the boss, while the rest burned adds and then spent the next 20 seconds on Deathwhisper.

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Originally Posted by zortax4484

I glanced through the comments and didn't see it asked, so I figured I'd throw it out there.

In regards to the Frostbolt in phase 2, can a warrior tank Spell Reflect it?

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I didn't dare to try. :-)

I think i might have been very unpopular if had spell reflected and died. I'll try next lockout.

A little out of the box thinking for you.

My 25 man is a very ranged heavy raid and the basic strategy seems to rely a decent mix of melee dps and ranged dps. To compensate for this we are experimenting with a very different strategy than what is the standard.

We actually have ranged dps and healers on the far back wall behind the boss spread out between the two pillars on the back wall (not the pillars in front of the boss but on the wall itself). Frost traps are left on the sides of elevator slowing any incoming adds from instantly charging in and killing a healer. Healers all get agro at the start and effectively pull all the mobs over to the boss. Adherants since they are casters will typically stop at the bottom of the stairs to cast at the healers. We have a death knight death grip the one from the left side (the side with 2 fanatics and 1 adherant into a decent spot right next to the boss). The adherants on the right side are burned down by the melee DPS at the bottom of the stairs. The three actual tanks focus solely on picking up the Fanatics and getting them on top of the boss. These adds do not suffer from AoE damage reduction. This is where our odd raid make up actually comes out ahead. Our heavy ranged DPS AoEs the trash right on top of the boss. The waves die before the next one spawns. And we have significantly higher damage being done to the mana shield. Our raid hasn't fully perfected the technique yet, but because of the added AoE damage on the boss phase one will take about 25-33% the time. I should add that not all of the ranged DPS simply AoEs. It is important to still have a few specifically dedicated to single target burning of Fanatics, especially reanimated or deformed. Also because of the frost traps near the elevator, deformed fanatics are simply ping ponged around by tanks taunting and ranged DPS pulling agro until they are dead.

This technique makes it a bit harder to pick up the adds since tanks aren't picking them up immediately, but rather when they get to the stairs so it does require a bit of practice. My raid hasn't killed her yet in 25 man but I suspect this is the technique which will work for us.

*edit* Should also note, spell reflect has no impact on AoE. Because of this even if Adherants are in the AoE our casters don't have to worry about them. It's actually better if they are cause they will die faster.

I should add that if you wanted to use a variation on this technique even with a balanced group of melee and ranged dps, or a melee heavy group, the basic point of the technique is to bring all the adds closer together. This also serves melee DPS as well since they have less running around to do.

The fight is very easy in 10m, we had 2 melee full time on the boss, healers in stairs in front of the boss and the rest in the room area, 1 tank in each side.
In 10 man there are not many choices, but the fight is pretty easy, the 2 adds before the boss wiped like 3 times and we 1 shoot her lol.

But how about is in 25m? You must split dps on boss and adds depending how much HP they have, any good idea? Similar like thorim, half and half, or melee on boss, range on adds?

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Originally Posted by Quinafoi

A little out of the box thinking for you.

We actually have ranged dps and healers on the far back wall behind the boss spread out between the two pillars on the back wall (not the pillars in front of the boss but on the wall itself). Frost traps are left on the sides of elevator slowing any incoming adds from instantly charging in and killing a healer. Healers all get agro at the start and effectively pull all the mobs over to the boss.

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does anyone have a video of this strategy? i'm interested in trying it with my guild and wanna know how it works. Seems to me you could CC two of the casters and maybe 1 melee, then have your melee focus down casters one by one, casters focus down melee as they're coming to you, and keep dps'ing the boss the whole time.

also curious if the pillars can be used to los the casters and bring them in closer, or if you have to use a dk to ice grip them. mainly just wanna see a vid of this technique if anyone knows of one please link.

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Originally Posted by Rhastah

does anyone have a video of this strategy? i'm interested in trying it with my guild and wanna know how it works. Seems to me you could CC two of the casters and maybe 1 melee, then have your melee focus down casters one by one, casters focus down melee as they're coming to you, and keep dps'ing the boss the whole time.

also curious if the pillars can be used to los the casters and bring them in closer, or if you have to use a dk to ice grip them. mainly just wanna see a vid of this technique if anyone knows of one please link.

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Sadly I haven't found any strategy posts or videos similar to the method adapted in my raid. A lot of people are using the conventional strategy documented in the Tank Spot video, bosskillers, and other such strategy forums.

One additional change we were considering though doesn't really seem necessary is we were considering having two paladin healers with Righteous Fury healing from behind the pillars in front of the boss to cause a similar luring effect. Though since the net result is similar to having all the healers and ranged stand against the back wall I didn't see much point. The Adherants have to get into range of the back which is near the bottom of the stairs and about the same position as they would be by baiting them with people standing behind the pillars.

CC can be used, though I'd advise against it in general. If you have cooldowns to spend on CC, you could be killing the mob faster. The only real CC needed should be snare effects like Frost Trap and Earthbind.

My raid generally has 9-10 ranged and only 5-6 melee. We have all the melee DPS on the side with the two adherants kill them at the bottom of the stairs with one exception being the death knight in the raid responsible for picking up the Adherant on the other side. Instead of the melee needing to run like 30 yards to get to the boss or get to the next add, they only have to move like 10 yards which makes their job a little easier as well.

We haven't killed Lady Deathwhisper yet, for a while we were trying to use the standard Strategy and weren't making much progress due to the low number of melee DPS. We adapted the strategy to better suit our raid comp and as a result were getting her mana shield to lowered significantly faster as well as still managing to clean up the adds before the next wave. Our best attempt so far I believe we had her around 1 million mana left on the mana shield before things just fell apart. We also ran out of time in raid to work on the technique further but were doing quite well with it. Trying to do the standard strategy we were only getting the mana shield to like 60% before being overrun by adds generally.

*edit* Also an annoyance for the death knight is sometimes the single Adherant on the left side (the side he has to death grip) sometimes has their spell reflect up as it gets into position. Not the end of the world but does delay it sometimes in getting that particular mob into position. A raid with more DKs could potentally deathgrip all the adherants and thus have all the mobs in the AoE, my raid only has one DK and the strategy accounts for that.

First, this is *much* easier on 10-man. Burn the three adds, then the shield. Rinse. Repeat. The only thing to be cautious of is dropping the shield when there are no adds up.

25-man is another story, at least for us so far. Since we haven't downed here, I won't bore you with our strat ideas / attempts. However, I do have a few observations:

1. Empowering appears to be a 2-step process. When she empowers fanatics once, they get the damage buff / self heal. If she empowers them while they have this, they transform. When she empowers adherents, they get the shield. If she empowers them while they have the shield, they start AoEing their Shadowfrost bolt. The first empower does not change the add's name; the second does.

2. Deathgrip does not work on shielded adherents. In fact, it will pull the DK *to* the Adherent (which could actually be useful...). Corollary: taunt does not work when the adherents are shielded. This one I'm not 100% certain on as I usually had pretty good aggro on adherents, but I believe it to be the case.

3. If an add martyrs themselves, they come back with any empowering buffs they had at the time. I've seen adherents pop up with the shield on. I do not believe the transformed fanatics can martyr.

The standard strat has not yet worked for us (we've tried a few variants as well). This could be low raid DPS or it could be our odd mixture of range/melee (4-6 melee, 10-12 ranged - typically 1 hunter).

Our guild could not get him down the first 2 trys because the zombies hit hard on 1 tank so our first 1 tank tanking 1 side and the other tanking the other side did not work out. We had 2 tanks at 1 side at a time so 1 could pickup the zombie and the other the normal adds. (note this was on 10m) after this tack it was just a matter of finetuning we got him on the second try on the new tack

Aye, what exactly happened at 3:33-3:34?

What about if you burn her mana nuking with every dps? tonight we assigned 8 dps from 16 just to deal with the boss, ending the 1st wave she was at 66% mana, with all the DPS we'd be able to get her at 30%~ just w the 1st wave up, so tanks must hold 14~ mobs by themselves before she get depleted.

Would that work? then DPS the adds and then boss, looks simple right?

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Originally Posted by Ciderhelm

The final tricks up Deathwhisper's sleeves, at least for phase 1, come in the form of spells she casts on her Cultist minions. Deathwhisper can empower a cultist, granting it a couple extra abilities. Empowered Adherents can cast a magic shield and a dangerous AOE, while empowered Fanatics will deal increased damage and heal for 300% of the damage they deal. These are somewhat dangerous, but it appears that they can be purged or possibly even spellstolen.

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Any confirmation of this? Since it sounded dangerous we had one mage try to spellsteal, with no effect, but it could be that she was not targeting the mob I had in mind (there's a bit of chaos when the adds arrive/are buffed/resurrect, too many mob types...).
In the end we ignored almost anything (it was 10-man) except for the "immune" ones which required focusing from the appropriate DPS. The mutated things hit for around 25k, but they die fast, so I think I ended up tanking them (I was just close by...). I get the idea that this kind of approach may not cut it in 25-man.

A couple notes from my guild's attempts (and eventual success) on our first night in 25 man:

- As someone above said, don't worry about tanking Adherents. If your tank can get them, great, but it's not priority #1. Just have them focused down first while the tank picks up the other mobs on each side. If there's more than one on your side, might not be a bad idea to split off a dps or two for interrupts.

- We had our third tank actually pull the mob from the stairs over to one of the groups, using LoS or having a free DK Death Grip it over. That way, cleave/AoE damage hits it too, and there's no "clean up" after the waves from the side are down.

- We also assigned someone on each side to mark a focus target, and we had ALL dps burn down one or the other, then go to Deathwhisper. We found this helped us keep the add waves under control AND get the shield down much easier. Basically, just split your dps into left side and right side, and follow the focus targets. This also made switching easier for when adds became immune to one type of damage or the other - we split dps evenly, and anyone who couldn't do good damage to the current target either switched to a different one or got on Deathwhisper while the effective dps burned the buffed add - since everyone is focused on the adds to start, there's less reaction time involved in looking for the correct target.

- To help facilitate this, we had our tanks on each side gather the mobs on the nearest set of steps to Deathwhisper. If they had to kite due to one being empowered/mutated, they'd kite the add to Deathwhisper, and any remaining adds on that side would be finished off by the boss, so that melee had a shorter run. You could potentially drag them to her as the Adherents are being killed, but we didn't want to run into LoS problems with the pillars and felt control was more important.

Using this strat instead of splitting dps between adds and boss, we were able to get her down with a lot of breathing room on the enrage timer. Depending on your raid and raid strengths, it's definitely a feasible alternative.

A few tips my guild saw from our Eventual Downing of her on 25m.

1. Warrior / Druid Tanking for the Right side of the room to deal with the double Adherent's. DK Tanks and Pally tanks use mostly magical attacks to get threat and thereby have a hard time getting any aggro. Even then like someone before me posted. Don't try to actually tank them just taunt them as best as you can and let your melee destroy them.

2. DK Tank for the Left side (My-Self) was quite useful, dropping DnD between 2 spawns on the left and having the healers in the middle FORCED 2 of the adds to walk through DnD and then Deathgrip one mob into it.

3. Due to the mob pathing issues (The mobs always walking through the tank and hitting him from behind if he tries to back up) I would always grab the fanatic's and back my self up against one of the walls that jutted out from an alcove.

4. DK DPS is better spent on the Boss due to 50% or more of all three current specs is Magical Dmg. Even Blood DPS DK's would benefit due to the ability to put the diseases on the target. Increasing the DMG output with HS on Lady Deathwhisper. Rather then having them spam HS and DS on an non-diseased Adherent due to the reflect shield.

*5. Deformed Fanatics. An EXCELLENT way to deal with them is to have one of the hunters (Who is dedicated to the side's due to Physical (Autoshot+ more) and Magical (Special Shots) for the adds) Distracting shot and then kite the Deformed, as all Caster DPS stops on Lady Deathwhisper and burns it down.

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Originally Posted by Daimon

What about if you burn her mana nuking with every dps? tonight we assigned 8 dps from 16 just to deal with the boss, ending the 1st wave she was at 66% mana, with all the DPS we'd be able to get her at 30%~ just w the 1st wave up, so tanks must hold 14~ mobs by themselves before she get depleted.

Would that work? then DPS the adds and then boss, looks simple right?

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My guild gave this Burn Method a shot. We got her shield down to like 20% but this was at the expense of the Tanks getting Overwhelmed on the sides.

Each Fanatic cleaves for 14k + and a tank having 3+ Fanatics is getting beat on pretty bad. So unless you can burn her down in under 2 waves. You might see your tanks dropping like flies. Not including the Scourge Strike that absorbs the good chunk of healing. So having that get reapplied constantly, makes healing your tanks an impossibility.

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Originally Posted by Helistar

Any confirmation of this? Since it sounded dangerous we had one mage try to spellsteal, with no effect, but it could be that she was not targeting the mob I had in mind (there's a bit of chaos when the adds arrive/are buffed/resurrect, too many mob types...).
In the end we ignored almost anything (it was 10-man) except for the "immune" ones which required focusing from the appropriate DPS. The mutated things hit for around 25k, but they die fast, so I think I ended up tanking them (I was just close by...). I get the idea that this kind of approach may not cut it in 25-man.

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We downed her last night but our mages and shammies said they couldn't spell steal or purge anything from the adds. Would love confirmation as well.