Hard Ice: Heroic modes in Icecrown

[swelt]

Last week, Arthas was killed by a handful of the very best guilds (~200 in 10 man, 80 in 25?) and those top guilds now have access to hard modes. With the removal of limited attempts, I'm sure a lot more guilds will get Arthas within the next few weeks and be following along behind.

While I'm sure there are some bosses (notably the limited attempts ones which factor into the big race to get first heroic Arthas) where people might be a bit reluctant to discuss strats as yet, I wonder if it's worth trying to get together some info on the other entry level hard modes. For Ulduar, it was very useful to identify those bosses that were better or worse to start with as you transition from normal to hard, and to summarise the differences.

Has anyone seen good info posted on the hard modes, or would care to share their experiences so far?

[Darkkiz]

Edit: Worldwide only 47 guilds killed LK25 last week.

Ok, now on topic
dps pov 25man (obviously all adds and bosses have more health and hit harder so not gonna post that about every boss)

Lord Marrowgar: need decent spreading now in p2 since he spikes 3 people during bonestorm twice, for the rest the encounter felt the same as normal

Lady Deathwhisper: huge step up from normal mode
p1: adds spawns alot faster, 3 MC's instead of 1
p2: she is untauntable so u need tanks to fight for aggro for the entire phase, still 3MC's, ghosts now explode for ALOT more and the explosion range is massive, adds keeps spawning but only from 1 side at a time

Gunship: same as normal mode except if u get hit by a rocket, u get a small knockback and 1 more add spawns from the portal on your ship

[Thegreatme]

While I haven't personally experienced the hardmodes yet I do remember a bunch of the abilties that seem to be hardmode only, as well as some speculation from my experiences on the normal modes:
(all of this is in addition the standard more hp/damage)

marrowgar: flames and bonestorm now have a DoT component to them

Deathwhisper: Adds will more than likely spawn much more often and there will probably be more that come form the back. the ghosts in p2 will probably be near one shots if you get hit by them. kite the boss around the room to help reduce the likelyness of melee getting gibbed by ghosts spawning on top of her.

Gunship: probably no changes but I really hope they ramped up the damage that the rockets do, currently I let my self get hit by them for more rage.

Saurfang: ramped up blood power generation. more focus on good execution of the strategy, people dying to mark heals for 15%

Festergut: higher DPS requirements, I can totally see less spores going out to make it harder for ranged to get properly spread out after they detonate. not having 3 inocculated debuffs will more than likely result in a guarenteed death

rotface: the ramp up of getting the debuff will more than likely be A LOT faster. the healing reduction caused by the debuff is now 100%. I can totally see the ooze management strategy used for dances with oozes being required to help combat the ramp up (only merge little oozes with little oozes and big oozes with big oozes to increase the number of little oozes required to make the big ooze explode). I can also see the slime floods either covering more of the room, or doing a lot more damage, or something else that would make them a legitimate hazard to the kiter.

putricide: ooze/gas variables. only ooze variables can DPS the volitile ooze, gas variables can only DPS the gas cloud. I can also totally see both expiriments spawning at the same time.

council: probably not tha big of changes, just more damage and making it more esential to burn as many empowered flame orb chages as possible and also making sure that people aren't chaining the empowered vortex

BQL: nothing changes but more strict requirements for DPS

dreamwalker: the 90% soft enrage is probably going to be much more painful.

sindragosa: debuff management is going to be vital, the buffet will probably destroy people who have more than like 2 stacks of backlash/chilled to the bone.

lich king: No clue but I hope it's exponentially harder than the rest of the bosses ala yogg0 25 man (inb4 he puts beacons on the vengeful spirits)

[Darkkiz]

neither of the Marrowgar abilities are correct
i really dont think u should be speculating

[Blacksen]

Marrowgar: DoT if you get hit by a single tick of fire (requires you to dodge it in advance). He casts a set of Bone Spikes during the Bone Storm.

Deathwhisperer: Untauntable in phase 2. Adds continue spawning at the same rate, but only from one side.

Gunship Battle: Trivial Knockback. 1 more of each type of add. A lot more damage to your own ship. Deep Freeze acts as a separate soft enrage (6th and 7th Freezes have 2 mages. 8th has 3, so on)

Deathbringer: Blood Beasts 1 shot people and have a 7-yard aura that slows people down in speed and haste. 20% heal if he kills someone.

Festergut: Putricide throws Malleable Goo down at you during the encounter.

Rotface: Adds put a slowing debuff on the person kiting them. Whenever the disease is removed, there's a 12k dmg spike and you're rooted for a few seconds.

Blood Prince Council: Every time you move, you get a stacking shadow damage debuff.

Dreamwalker: AoE shadow dmg pulse that's relatively minor, but significant.

[Darksend]

First hand experience, since almost everyone above me is wrong: (all in 10 man)

LM: bone spikes during bone storm

LDW: single add in the back in phase 2, CCable. Adds in phase 1 spawn faster. Ghost explode range in 20 yards. TAUNT IMMUNE!!! I think I am missing something else.

Gunship: just as easy, knockback from rockets no other changes that I noticed

DBS: Hardest fight we killed tonight. The entire fight is about controlling the adds now. Slows, stuns, taunts, everything. They slow everyone and 1shot even tanks.

Rotface: Stupidly easy, a vile gas which only roots you but still lets you do all your abilities hits random ranged. Since you need a kiter just move 2 ranged DPS out to ranged and you cannot even tell the difference between normal and hard. The ooze around the outside has a stacking slow so freedoms are required.

Festergut: Putricide stands on his platform and throws malleable goos at the raid. Just spread out and no longer keep any ranged in melee. Hurts tanks even in full 264 gear with a 3 stack so your tank healer CANNOT GET HIT by the goo as it has the same haste debuff as the putricide encounter.

As far as we got tonight.

Marrowgar: DoT if you get hit by a single tick of fire (requires you to dodge it in advance) no. He casts a set of Bone Spikes during the Bone Storm.

Deathwhisperer: Untauntable in phase 2. Adds continue spawning at the same rate, but only from one side. no

Gunship Battle: Trivial Knockback. 1 more of each type of add no. A lot more damage to your own ship. Deep Freeze acts as a separate soft enrage (6th and 7th Freezes have 2 mages. 8th has 3, so on). [(we killed it in 3 deep freezes so I cannot comment on this)

Deathbringer: Blood Beasts 1 shot people and have a 7-yard aura that slows people down in speed and haste. 20% heal if he kills someone.

Festergut: Putricide throws Malleable Goo down at you during the encounter.

Rotface: Adds put a slowing debuff on the person kiting them. Whenever the disease is removed, there's a 12k dmg spike and you're rooted for a few seconds.

Blood Prince Council: Every time you move, you get a stacking shadow damage debuff.

Dreamwalker: AoE shadow dmg pulse that's relatively minor, but significant.

[swelt]

I think it would probably be useful if we distinguish between 10 and 25 man hard modes as they are probably different. I assume for example that when Blacksen says "Deathwhisperer: Untauntable in phase 2. Adds continue spawning at the same rate, but only from one side" that he is refering to 25 man and saying that in phase 2 that adds will continue to spawn (but only from 1 side, cf phase 1 where adds spawn from both sides). That's the kind of thing you could only have in a 25 man version where you expect 3 tanks.

[Odok]

First hand experience, since almost everyone above me is wrong: (all in 10 man)

LM: bone spikes during bone storm

LDW: single add in the back in phase 2, CCable. Adds in phase 1 spawn faster. Ghost explode range in 20 yards. TAUNT IMMUNE!!! I think I am missing something else.

Gunship: just as easy, knockback from rockets no other changes that I noticed

DBS: Hardest fight we killed tonight. The entire fight is about controlling the adds now. Slows, stuns, taunts, everything. They slow everyone and 1shot even tanks.

Rotface: Stupidly easy, a vile gas which only roots you but still lets you do all your abilities hits random ranged. Since you need a kiter just move 2 ranged DPS out to ranged and you cannot even tell the difference between normal and hard. The ooze around the outside has a stacking slow so freedoms are required.

Festergut: Putricide stands on his platform and throws malleable goos at the raid. Just spread out and no longer keep any ranged in melee. Hurts tanks even in full 264 gear with a 3 stack so your tank healer CANNOT GET HIT by the goo as it has the same haste debuff as the putricide encounter.

As far as we got tonight.

Perhaps on 10-player, but I can confirm just from watching live streams that everything Blacksen said is true for 25-player difficulty (except for the marrowgar DoT, but I wouldn't be surprised).

[gacktt]

Are most of the 10man hardmodes easier than lich king 10(post nerf)? we're gonna down him when we do our 10m later on and it's nice to know what we're up against.

[Dragaan]

On deathwhisper, she's immune to taunt after p1 is over. Tanks need to taunt just before her shield goes down to gain aggro. Also, this means you should probably use a controlled tank swap (like bloodboil in bt). On 25man, you can probably use 1 tank with constant MDs/Tricks and have dps swap to kill adds if they get too high (or just have only dps with aggro dumps on the boss fulltime?). Also, on 10man the dark martyrdom explodes for like 20k damage so melee need to move out of that. It's not too hard tho, both of our 10mans 2-shot her.

I think something's wrong with gunship. It's practically the same fight. Our ship was over 90% when we won, so I really don't think the ship takes extra damage.

Saurfang is kind of the same fight, just more dmg/hp. You have to be extra careful not to feed him any extra bp, or gaining marks too quickly will wipe you. I would recommend 2healing this fight. The 10man group I was in was 3healing it, and we kept wiping sub 10% because a 4th mark went out and someone ended up dying. Our other 10man 2healed it and killed him on the 2nd try. They killed him a few seconds after the 3rd mark went out. Oh, and you also have to kill the adds extra quickly because there's a debuff that slows you down significantly and you won't be able to outrun them (you can always taunt, but just make sure they die asap anyway). We assigned 1 ranged to each beast and 1 ranged that helped on both of them and they were never an issue.

[Dragaan]

Are most of the 10man hardmodes easier than lich king 10(post nerf)? we're gonna down him when we do our 10m later on and it's nice to know what we're up against.

I don't know about post-nerf, since I haven't tried him since we killed it last week. The first 4 heroics on 10man are definitely easier than lich king was pre-nerf. I'd bet all the "no limit" heroic bosses are easier than lich king. Can't say for sure since we haven't gone back to finish our 10mans yet.