Icecrown Lich King

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Originally Posted by Cardinal

Hi,

I have a couple of questions about Phase 1.

In the 25-man video, you say to ignore the Shamblers and burn down the Lich King quickly, but in the 10-man video, you say to focus on the Shamblers and apparently only kill the LK when there's time? Also, in the 25-man video you say the OT shouldn't tank the ghouls (except 1-2), but in the 10-man video, your OT tanks all the ghouls?

Is there a reason for this?

My 10-man group has, until now, been using the 25-man tactic of ignoring the Shamblers/MT holding the ghouls, but we usually have 1-2 Shamblers up during the phase change and a ton of ghouls. We're starting Phase 2 with ghouls and raging spirits alive, and it's basically chaos.

Should we put all our DPS on the Shamblers and get the OT to tank all the ghouls?

PS) Anybody else having a problem where LK keeps moving? Even if I stay still, he keeps circling around me. Very annoying.

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Our guild recently downed LK on 10man. For phase one, the off tank would pick up only the first four ghouls that spawn and after that any horrors that would spawn. People who have the necrotic plague have to run to these adds asap and be dispelled. If at anytime the OT only has one add (hopefully a horror) to tank he'll taunt one ghoul from me - though he really only wants 2 horrors. The horrors enrage mechanic only lasts for one or two hits before they de-enrage and for the most part can be ignored - healers might want to call out if both horrors are enraged at the same time. Using this strat we always got to phase 1.5 only seeing 2 horrors max.

Going into phase 1.5 we spend the first few seconds getting into three separate positions and aoeing the ghouls as much as we can. If we still have horrors up the off tank stays where he is (away from the group) until the horrors are dead, which should be soon, and the disease is dispelled as it will finish being on the OT.Once raging spirits come, the person with the debuff runs to an area which is easily visible by me, so I can taunt the raging spirit as soon as it spawns, dps all switch to the raging spirit using incidental aoe to finish off the remaining adds. It wasn't uncommon on our attempts to have one or two ghouls left going into phase 2.

Other Hints I'd add:
- If you aren't in the best of gear, get a taunt rotation with the tanks - as soon as soul reaper is put on the one tanking LK get the other tank to taunt and hold the LK until the LK tank is back to full HP and he taunts again.
- If doing a taunt rotation, glyph of taunt (warrior) is very nice, i like.
- Someone with authority in the raid should acquire raidwatch 2. It's like a modern dbm, but why I insist you get it is because it will put a skull on the people with defiles - no longer needing to rely on vent.
- Vile spirits in phase 3, unless your group is heavy on AoE damage (and geared), we found it was better to single target them down. As long as people were spread out one vile spirit won't kill anyone, it's when two vile spirits chase the same person that deaths often occur. Just remember they can be snared and or slowed which will make kiting them alot easier.


Lastly, the LK walks around me even when I stay still too! So far I'm blaming it on Australia's crappy net though. D: All the best with the kills!

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Originally Posted by Cardinal

Hi,

I have a couple of questions about Phase 1.

In the 25-man video, you say to ignore the Shamblers and burn down the Lich King quickly, but in the 10-man video, you say to focus on the Shamblers and apparently only kill the LK when there's time? Also, in the 25-man video you say the OT shouldn't tank the ghouls (except 1-2), but in the 10-man video, your OT tanks all the ghouls?

Is there a reason for this?

My 10-man group has, until now, been using the 25-man tactic of ignoring the Shamblers/MT holding the ghouls, but we usually have 1-2 Shamblers up during the phase change and a ton of ghouls. We're starting Phase 2 with ghouls and raging spirits alive, and it's basically chaos.

Should we put all our DPS on the Shamblers and get the OT to tank all the ghouls?

PS) Anybody else having a problem where LK keeps moving? Even if I stay still, he keeps circling around me. Very annoying.

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We've been very successful on 10 man with P1 and can get into P2 with ease on a regular basis. I'm a warrior and OT all of the adds in P1 a little ways away from the rest of the group to avoid plague jumping to another raid member. When someone gets the plague they'll run towards me to be cleansed ensuring the plague jumps to either me or an add. We let the plague kill all the adds because as it kills each one it gains a stack and soon enough it'll be one shotting the ghouls and killing the shamblers in two or three ticks. The P2 transition begins a little between the second and third Shambler spawns and there will still be adds up going into P1.5; usually 1 shambler and a couple of ghouls but the adds vary depending on how the plague jumps. Our P1.5 setup on the outer edge is our ranged in one group, melee in another group, and me with the adds in a third group keeping the ranged group in between the melee group and myself so I'm reachable by the healers. I'll continue to OT the adds during P1.5 as the plague kills them off. When the last add dies the plague jumps to me, it's cleansed, and it's gone for good. I then proceed to the melee group to tank the raging spirits.

The LK tank will has three points (in a straight line, not a triangle) at which he tanks at. Each time ghouls are spawned he'll pull the LK to another point dragging the melee along with LK out of where they're spawning to avoid melee AoE, allowing me to come in and pickup the new ghouls. The trickiest part to this timing the shockwaves as to not let one mow down the rest of the raid. There is a cast time on the shockwave and the direction is not set at the beginning of the cast so you can somewhat guide the direction of the shockwave while its being cast.

And yes, I was on LK the first couple of attempts and he constantly readjusts.

Great movie! We still try to learn this one, and this will help us a lot. :)

Our 10man kill is fairly controlled and we use 2 healers 2 tanks 2 melee and 4 ranged DPS. Phase 1 we use triangular positioning with the OT keeping 1 ghoul with him when he is tanking 1 horror, if 2 horrors are up he tanks 0 ghouls.

Phase 2 we immidiately stack central for the first valkyr (Note the OT tanking the Raging Spirits left over from the transition does not need to go central as valkyrs never pick up tanks, this prevents raging spirits silencing/dmging the raid). DPS prioritise Valkyrs -> Raging Spirits -> Lich King. For positioning, if defile is next, we keep the center clear and spread out, if valkyr is next we stack centrally, we call snares and stun rotations on valkyrs for complete control. The raging spirit is often still alive on the first soul reaver so our MT pops cooldowns and eats first soul reaver solo until we begin a tank rotation for the rest of phase 2. Move the LK to the edge for the next transition making sure you have plenty of time to take him to 40% before the next Valkyr arrives.

We use heroism/bloodlust in this 2nd transition to minimise raging spirits when phase 3 begins. Our MT tanks the LK at the edge of the room and as soon as vile spirits is cast he moves the LK to the opposite side of the room and the raid follows. This creates a big distance between the spirits spawning spot and the raid. We use our OT as a "spirit soaker/soul reav taunter" aswell as a rotation on each vilie spirit cast between our ret pally, shadowpriest and dps DK in which they use cooldowns such as bubble, dispersion and antimagic shell to eat any remaining spirits. This prevents all raid damage from spirits and makes our strategy of 2 healing alot easier. Along with sufficient tank healing and harvest soul healing we complete each phase extremely quickly using these methods and the fight is extremely controlled with nobody dying.

I hope this isnt too confusing and helps alot of you out. I think using a rotation between any dps with immunity cooldowns to soak the spirits makes phase 3 a load easier and if you wanted you could remove the need for the OT to soak spirits at all and simply leave your DPS to do it.

My Guild is currently stuck in the first transition for this encounter. We are able to go into it with no Horrors up (LK only gets two summons off before transition phase). We spread out into 3 groups: Healer 2dps per side then tanks and healer in the middle with a floating melee dps.

Don't have the combat log data handy but I know that all the dps in our team can easily output 7-9k when simply standing still and dpsing a target (which is essentially what you do in the transitions). Tanks sit around 54 and 55k health respectfully. Don't have numbers on healers but have a druid, a paladin, and a priest. (also have a paladin we can trade in and out with the priest)

Major issue we are facing is that at the end of the first transition, we still have 2 horrors up. It doesn't seem like theres any way to counter this, we have even burned lust in this phase and its simply not happening. The result seems to end up being that the tanks go in to phase 2 with the spirits wailing on them.


I guess my questions here are as follows:
- I have read that you should easily be able to get all but 1 horror down in the first transition and have the OT hold it away from the raid while DPS kills it. Is this true and if so.. how the heck are we not able to get 2 of these things down in a minutes time. ( I know the combat log would help here, but I am presently at work and its unavailable)
- Is going in to Phase 2 with 2 of them up feasible and if so how fast should they be down (recognizing Val'kyr and Defile issues, as well as the tank damage spikes that will be happening at this point in the fight)


I don't typically come to places like this to ask questions, as I sort of like to just beat at a problem until we can figure out a solution, but I can't honestly see any reason we arnt able to breeze through those spirits.

Thanks for the diagram for Defile/phase 2 positions... quick question on it. You said in your strategy description that you have the raid start premoving when Defile comes off cooldown... does that mean the whole group moves to your intended Defile spot, someone gets targeted, and the whole group runs away from that person to melee range?

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Originally Posted by Anjerith

I guess my questions here are as follows:
- I have read that you should easily be able to get all but 1 horror down in the first transition and have the OT hold it away from the raid while DPS kills it. Is this true and if so.. how the heck are we not able to get 2 of these things down in a minutes time. ( I know the combat log would help here, but I am presently at work and its unavailable)
- Is going in to Phase 2 with 2 of them up feasible and if so how fast should they be down (recognizing Val'kyr and Defile issues, as well as the tank damage spikes that will be happening at this point in the fight)

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Going into phase two with two still up is very feasible - although I recommend doing lust on the second transition phase and it's optimal if only one is still up. However, numerous attempts where made where we still had 2 raging spirits up in phase two. Though everyone needs to be aware of when to spread, when to stack, and that Valks>Ragings>LK.

@Phaythe:
While our guild doesn't have designated spots, we do make sure that with 3 seconds left people are moving to the outside circle (assuming no immediate valks). Using a buff called RaidWatch2 (similar to dbm) it automatically puts a skull on the defiled person making it easier for people to note who to move away from.

Just wondering if the OT can be put inside Frostmourne. I assume the MT cant be put inside the sword, but how does the game decide who the OT is? my biggest concern for this is that my DPS in tank gear (even if i go blood presence and swap to my DPS gemed /runed weapon my DPS is still a fraction of our actual DPSers and i'm not sure i could kill the spirit in time.)

I think you can rest assured, I've hit phase 3 many times and have yet to see the inside of frostmourne room. (I hear it's GLORIOUS)

1. Having 2 Raging Spirits still up during the transition from phase 1 to 2 shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully, one of the two raging spirits are fairly low - you'll always have at least 1 near full health since the third raging spirit spawns near the tail end of the transition phase.

All you need to remember is that Valkyr and Defile handling comes first. So have your raid clumped on Arthas, and the OT positioned outside the raid, at the edge of the circle. It's better to play it safe and not risk any silences on the raid at any point.

After the raid takes care of the first Valkyr and the first Defile, the raid should collapse for Valkyr; melee sits on Lich King while ranged cleans up the remaining Raging Spirits. When the Valkyr spawns, get a stun on it quickly - and then immediately spread for Defile. The first stun should actually be used to staple the Valkyr in place, so that you give the raid time to spread out for Defile - after Defile, you can recollapse and get back to DPSing the Valkyr - after which you spread back out for Defile. The tempo everyone will eventually get is: Collapse for Valkyr, once the stun is called Spread out for Defile, once Defile is spawned get on Valkyr (Melee collapses on Valkyr at this point) and after Valkyr is killed Spread out.

2. The primary reason why you need the Raging Spirits down ASAP is because you need the off tank free asap to help deal with Soul Reaper. If you have enough outside cds and an MT that can eat 2 Soul Reapers back to back using only his own cds, you shouldn't over stress getting the Raging Spirits down. Your focus should ALWAYS be on the Valkyrs and the Defiles - those are always your first priorities. This is why Prot Paladins are the preferred tanks for a first kill, because they can handle 2 or sometimes even 3 back to back Soul Reapers using just their own abilities - it allows the dps to concentrate more on Valkyrs and Defiles than getting the adds down and clean up the adds at a much more forgiving pace.

3. IMO, your choice in OTs is just as important as your choice in MTs. A warrior OT can trivialize aspects of this fight just as much as a paladin MT. Safeguard + glyph of Intervene for every Soul Reaper almost guarantees your MT will never get gibb'd and will save his AD proc for when the raid gets badly positioned where tank healers are seperated from the MT because of a sloppy defile. Vigilance on the MT also makes P3 ridiculously easy - the OT simply stands outside of raid and will reliably soak 3-4 vile spirits just by himself every wave; allowing your ranged dps to essentially kill just 1 vile spirit each and then get back to dpsing Arthas.

We have beaten Lichy10 recently and used a fire mage and a warlock to nuke down the vile spirits in p3.
I still got two questions about this phase though:

1) Does aoeing the spirits cause them to become active faster? We had the impression that they started blowing up people much faster

2) What are good alternative strategies to use when you don't have SPs/Fire Mages/Locks in your raid to aoe them?

Thanks to everybody who helped with my questions. We managed to kill the LK tonight for the first time in scrub 10-man only gear. *chuffed*

Phase 1: We tanked the LK in a big pack near the Shamblers (copying what happens in Tankspot's 10-man video). OT held most of the ghouls. We put one DPS on the LK just because we don't need them all on the Shamblers. The rest focus on the Shamblers, and make sure to pass the plague to some of the nearby ghouls before standing close to the Shambler and putting it on him. We usually manage P1 in 3 Shamblers, and the third dies in seconds due to huge plague stacks. We just have to be careful not to start the next bit until the plague is on the 3rd Shambler. This meant we had no Shamblers to worry about in the transition.

Phase 2: We found it really helpful to have one person call out on Vent when a Valkyr, Defile or Soul Reaper was about to happen. (I got to be the human Boss Mod for this). As in the video, the worst thing was Defile blob on a melee chasing after a Valkyr, but giving everybody adequate warning to move the f**k away helped. The Soul Reaper damage took me down to 5-10%, but again, early warning allowed the healers kept me through it and let me to solo-tank the LK.

Until P3 when I died - fortunately the OT managed to pick him up and finish the fight! We just spread out and ate the ghosts, couple of people also died to panic and proximity, but P3 was the easiest phase for us. Slow and steady.

Hey folks. My guild has been having a real rough patch with the valkyrs (what a surprise!). What do you guys find the easiest way to kill the valkyrs is? Right now we are going with the focus fire one at a time method but it always seems like we are off by a valk or so. Do other guilds use some sort of AoE (not counting incidental AoE or pestilence) or assign groups to kill valks? Watching the video on the first page, I often see two valks dying at the same time. Are we missing something here?

Also, I was thinking of having our ret paladin run with glyph of holy wrath and use it once when the valks land and once at the edge. Do others find that DR is still in effect by the time valks are at the edge or has it been reset?

Thanks for any help we can get!

Just as an alternative 10-man strategy, my guild did a very different tactic for phase 1 that made it much easier for us at least, as opposed to the ones I'm seeing where people try to only get a set amount of ghouls on the OT or taunt one ghoul over at a time.

For starters, we made our triangle of me+melee on LK, ranged and healers as another point, and the OT as the third point.

Nice lil factoid btw, the Lich king ALWAYS spawns the shambling horror directly the way he's facing. So if I have my back to the OT (IE the lich king is facing the OT), the shamblers spawn almost on top of him. It gets a little "off" if the LK decides to dance around the ghouls spawning, but it's easy to face him the right direction again.

Anyway, going back the the strategy, I tanked the LK, and the (pally) OT tanked all the ghouls and all the shamblers for phase 1. The rotation basically was ghouls spawn, he picks them up and goes to place. Shambler spawns on top of him, he grabs it, and from then on he'd throw his shield whenever new ghouls spawned (I'd thunderclap to keep them in range till all were up), and taunt any that his shield throw missed. DPS+healers would run to the OT area whenever they got the plague and get it taken off, then ran back.

The DPS all took the first shambler to ~50%. Then they switched to the LK for the rest of the phase aside from the occasional tranq shot. The timing on this works like a charm, it doesn't seem to matter whether the plague jumps to a ghoul or shambler, whenever we got to the phase 2 transition the OT would have a few ghouls or a shambler+ghoul left up, which died well before the 2nd raging spirit (I took the first). He'd run to the edge a bit apart from us to get rid of the plague permanently once his phase 1 adds were dead. The only challenge is picking up each wave of ghouls while tanking a shambler; our paladin did this fairly easily and I suspect a DK could too. There would be a brief period where there were 2 shamblers on him sometimes at the second one's spawn, but this never lasted more than a little while.

A few other tips:

1) P2 announce the next order for each Defile and Valkyr, IE "Defile's first, spread out"..."ok it's off, bunch up again". Or the reverse. Despite what I've read so far on this forum, you will encounter many occasions when they come within a few seconds of each other.
2) A well geared pally (and probly druid) can just "eat" soul reaper without outside help.
3) One thing the guides aren't clear on is the P3 vile spirits and taunting; don't taunt unless they're in the process of swooping down and chasing someone.
4) Similarly it should be pointed out that the OT will probly have 2 Raging spirits upon entering phase 3. He should tank them apart from everyone, facing away. Make sure that your guys know to hit raging spirits until vile spirits appear, but that vile spirits take priority. The first few times we got to phase 3 we were so desperate to get the raging spirits down that the viles ate us alive; really as long as the OT faces them away from the raid they're not much of a threat in 10m, the only problem is if you have a non-bear/pally on Arthas and need to safeguard bot/taunt.
5) If you're really having trouble, stack ranged dps. There are just so many factors against melee dps in this fight that you'd have to make a list.

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Originally Posted by Darksend

as for the strat, ok forgive how crude this is going to be I apologize you put me on the spot here and I am on my bad computer.
<snip awesome paint diagran>

Obviously this is extremly rough, if a melee gets it while killing a valkyr that is already flight away or if a tank gets it things need to adjust but this was the general strategy we set up going in. Remember, you will always be carried to the nearest edge when picked up, so in 25 man you want to cheat to one side to force them to fly together to allow them to be cleaved.

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This is exactly what I've been looking for. It would be really great if this kind of diagram could be included in strat vids where appropriate, as sometimes a simple diagram will tell you more than 100 words or the in game movie itself.

One additional question though: is it smart or counter productive to spread out a bit before defile? I'm having a debate with another officer on this point. He thinks we should be more spread out to limit the chance of multiple people not reacting fast enough. I think spreading out will lead to situations where people simply can't run away because they are surrounded by others.

used the safeguard strat yesterday and got our first 10man kill. awesome!

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Originally Posted by Kazeyonoma

used the safeguard strat yesterday and got our first 10man kill. awesome!

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Kazey, we're going to be using the safeguard strat as well. To confirm you're using it to mitigate Soul Reaper correct?

is there any relationship between when you kill the first wave of valkyrs and when the 2nd wave spawns?

My 10 man just got to LK and in our first few attempts we get him down to 70% every time. What this video doesn't explain well nor do any of the threads following it, is how the hell do you deal with Raging Spirits. If your spread out to not get hit by "Pain and Suffering" how do you deal with the Spirit? Do you just Stack and burn it down? Do you not Kill it?

Heres what happens. He teleports to the middle, we run to the edges, and spread out. We kill the blue spheres, Raging Spirits spawn, we taunt and turn. Then DPS tries to bring them down, quake begins. We run in and still have Raging Spirits kicking the crap out of our tanks. Like I think Im missing a mechanic here or something.

Our raid Comp was as follows:
DK Tank (Me) - MT
Pally Tank - OT
Resto Druid
Priest (Disc or Holy)
Healadin
Rogue
Lock
Enh Sham
Mage
Ret Pally

All of us are exceptionally geared from 25m ICC. I just think we are missing some simple mechanic that would help us out.

Thank you for the help.

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Originally Posted by Olat

My 10 man just got to LK and in our first few attempts we get him down to 70% every time. What this video doesn't explain well nor do any of the threads following it, is how the hell do you deal with Raging Spirits. If your spread out to not get hit by "Pain and Suffering" how do you deal with the Spirit? Do you just Stack and burn it down? Do you not Kill it?

Heres what happens. He teleports to the middle, we run to the edges, and spread out. We kill the blue spheres, Raging Spirits spawn, we taunt and turn. Then DPS tries to bring them down, quake begins. We run in and still have Raging Spirits kicking the crap out of our tanks. Like I think Im missing a mechanic here or something.

Our raid Comp was as follows:
DK Tank (Me) - MT
Pally Tank - OT
Resto Druid
Priest (Disc or Holy)
Healadin
Rogue
Lock
Enh Sham
Mage
Ret Pally

All of us are exceptionally geared from 25m ICC. I just think we are missing some simple mechanic that would help us out.

Thank you for the help.

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We use a central kill zone with the Ranged spread out on either side. The Melee is going to have to stack to kill the spirits, there's no other way around it, healers just have to compensate for the extra damage.