Originally Posted by Darksend (10-man)
Welcome back to the icecrown raid guide, my name is darksend and in this video I will be covering our 10 man lich king strategy.
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The lich king has 3 phases with a fourth transitional phase that happens at 70 and 40 percents. This fight requires two tanks and is best done with 3 healers, especially for phase 3.
Off the pull, the lich king will cast several different spells before really attacking the tank. this, combined with the fact you should be saving tricks and misdirects for the offtank, makes agro somewhat tricky. Make sure to give the tank several seconds before dpsing.
The lich kings first cast will be infest, which he will cast every 20-30 seconds. This will aoe the whole raid for about 7K damage and leave a dot on everyone. The dot has no max duration so the only way to remove it is to heal each individual person up past 90%. Discipline priests are really good for countering this by pre-shielding everyone. At times, the dot will be removed almost immediatly because the shield will absorb enough that players will not drop before the 90% threshold. the longer it stays on a person the more it will tick for so make sure to removed it quickly.
Next is his own version of army of the dead, drudge ghouls. He will summon 3 ghouls approximately every 20 seconds. As long as they are on a tank they can be casually aoed down and it is not a problem to have 3-4 sets up. The real purpose of the ghouls is to help stack the plague I will talk about in a minute and the more ghouls you have up the better it works out. These should be getting fan tricksed to the tank.
Every minute or so he will summon a Shambling horror. This must be tanked facing away from the raid as they do a shockwave that will one shot any non-tank. They also have an enrage that you need either a hunter for tranq shot or a rogue with anesthetic poison to remove. The shockwave during enrage will one shot the tank. The horror is stunable so if you see it casting an enraged shockwave you should conc blow, bash, hoj, kidney, etc if the enrage is not being removed. Unlike a warriors shockwave the horror's one does not stun. Hunters should save MD for these so they will run to the offtank without risking shockwaving as the offtank is backing up with it.
The final ability is necrotic plague, which he will do every 30 seconds. Necrotic plague is a stacking disease which does 50K damage every 5 seconds. Every time it is dispelled it will lose a stack and jump the the nearest target and if it kills its target it will gain a stack. The ideal way to utilize this is to have it dispelled and jump to a ghoul, and just continue to ping-pong it around the melee and the ghouls until it lands on the shambler. Phase one is by far the longest phase, and mostly because you spend so much time dpsing horrors that the lich king himself dies so slowly. Executing this properly will greatly increase your time on arthas. The down side is the lich king gains a stacking damage buff every time it jumps so be careful. I was able to safely handle around a 40 stack before I needed to start using cooldowns.
A full hp horror spawning during a transition is almost a guaranteed wipe, where as ghouls are easily killed off by aoe or any remaining stacks of the plague. Make sure to check the spawn timer before pushing. At around 72% start moving him to the edge and spreading out. This transition is part of the reason we tank where we do, less movement during the phase 1 transition. I will discuss the abilities during the 40% transition.
After a minute of this, he will being to cast quake and phase 2 will begin. Quake will break off the entire outer edge of the platform so as soon as you see it casting move immediately. He no longer summons adds, but instead a valkyr will now fly in and drop raid members off the edge if they are not killed in time. To counter this have everyone stack up near the middle when the ability is off cooldown to make her fly as long as possible before being able to drop your raider. These valkyr are also stunnable and slowable, so get some kind of move speed reduction on them as soon as they spawn. Warrior offtanks work really well on this if your main tank can solo the next ability I will talk about with charge, conc blow, and shield bash daze.
He also gains two abilities. The one the tank has to worry about is soul reaper. This is a dot placed on the tank which does 50K damage after 5 seconds and increases the lich kings haste by 100%. He will do this every 30 seconds. Deciding if you should solo it or use a taunt rotation greatly depends on your tank setup and how well geared you are. DKs and druids with 4pc can use vamp blood and barkskin with the 4pc bonus on every other one, and warriors can use the absorb with last stand or shield wall on every other 4th one. Paladins are fine tanking this until ardent defender procs, and even then the 20% reduction will always work on it.
The other ability is the big one. Defile will target a random raid member, which can include the tank, and place a cloud under them. Every time it does damage it will grow in size. Lich king will target the person he is doing it on, so have your main tank calling who it is on or in our case having a mod which puts a skull on the person, and they need to move immediately. At times, this lines up exactly with the valkyr so either you will be running after it trying to free someone and cut people off or more likely you will have to run out of the middle and get picked up right next to the edge. Be very careful about which way you run and do not spread it. As with most things the graphic is smaller than the effect so really be out of it. This is what will wipe you more than anything if not controlled correctly.
He still does infest but the plague is gone.
At 43% again stop DPS, wait until a valkyr goes out and start getting towards the edge of the platform. Be careful of defile here but otherwise stay spread out and as soon as lich king runs to the middle, wait for the platform to come back up and get on it asap. You do this because the lich king channels remorseless winter. This deals 7-8K a second to anyone still on his inner platform. You stay spread out because he also casts pain and suffering, which is a forked lightning which deals 3K to everyone in the arc and also leaves a dot which can stack up to 5 times. We split the raid into 3 groups to reduce the chances of people getting 2 straight and not letting the stack reset. He will summon ice spheres which will target a random raid member and if it reaches them will throw everyone around it either off the edge or across the platform. They only have 6K hp so they are very easily killed you just have to have someone assigned to watch them. Finally, a raging spirit will spawn out of a random raider, which must be picked up by the tank and faced away. They do a frontal cone silence which hits for about 20K and silences for 5 seconds.
The valkyrs no longer come in phase 3 so you can use the entire platform to spread out. HE will continue to so soul reaper and defile.
His first new ability is harvest soul. It deals 45K damage over 6 seconds and if you live you get ported into frostmourne. As a healer you must keep the lich kings father alive and as a DPS you must kill the spirit before terenas dies. The spirit will do a channel that can be interrupted but also dispelled. This is the biggest source of damage on terenas so make sure to stop it. If the player inside fails the lich king becomes enraged for 15 seconds. The soul repear will 1-shot tanks if this happens so be ready to use cooldowns if it happens.
While that is going on inside, outside the lich king will summon 10 vile spirits. Just aoe them down and avoid them when they start moving as the will blow up if they hit you. If you still have raging spirits up kill the vile spirits first then clean up the ragings after.
We decided to play it safe and do a taunt rotation in this phase. As soon as I was topped back up I would taunt, or essentially having the same tank eat every soul reaper.
As long as you did decent in phase 1 this phase is another "stay alive" phase for an easy win. The biggest thing is to stay spread out so you can identify if a ghost is on you easier but also so you will be the only one hit by defile. Once you get to 10% everyone in the raid dies. There will be some RP and you will be rezzed by terenas. At this point it is relatively safe to say it is a free kill. Even people who were dead from the fight and not the deathtouch will be rezzed back up.
